Very Bad Things
by freudian fuckup
Summary: On the list of Very Bad Things Sirius Black has done, Snogging Moony In a Bathroom is really only eighth or ninth.
1. Very Bad Things

There are a lot of things that Sirius Black likes about Remus Lupin.

Remus has nice hair. It's not all shiny and liquid-looking like Sirius' own, but gold and coppery-brown and out of focus, with all sorts of odd angles to it, particularly when he's just woken up.

And Remus comes up with some of the most clever, cheeky ideas for mischief Sirius has ever heard. For all his disapproving glares and _tsk tsk_s, Remus has always had creative ideas for inciting his own brand of mayhem. For all that he lacks James' and Sirius' gutsy, head-first, surely they won't kick us out for a little thing like this but just in case let's not get caught mentality, Remus has been the quiet mastermind behind several of their more memorable and, proportionately, more illegal pranks. See, he has this sneaky way of controlling things without feeling the need to draw diagrams or stand on chairs and make proclamations, as James and Sirius are wont to do. He says things like "you could just..." and "it wouldn't be hard to..." and the next thing anyone notices, the Slytherins can only communicate through yodeling.

And, apparently, Sirius Black sincerely, unfortunately, in a really weird way, likes the way Remus Lupin _kisses._ Not that he knows from experience, technically (yet), but it's the kind of thing just he _knows_, the way one might know one likes a particular type of cake without actually having a slice. And _gods_, does Sirius ever like cake.

It is this infallible, undeniable Sirius-Think that has compelled him to act in a manner some might consider coercive, but Sirius likes to think of as merely persuasive. They are in a bathroom. It is night. They are very, very alone.

They are both in the third stall from the door, which took a good bit of maneuvering and vague gesturing on Sirius' part, though not quite as much maneuvering or indeed finesse as _how _they happen to be standing: Remus with his back against the stall door, Sirius with his front against Remus. But no one seems to be complaining. In fact, the flimsy pretense under which Remus had even agreed to leave the dorm seems to slip quietly into the corner and make itself scarce.

"Is this… _alright_?"

Sirius smiles against Remus's throat. "Everything's alright so long as you don't get caught."

Remus tenses a little, and Sirius wonders if his Prefectly honor is going to get in the way, but then Remus twists his fingers into Sirius's hair and tugs his head upward so that their eyes meet. Moments later, their lips follow suit.

On the list of Very Bad Things Sirius Black has done, Snogging Moony In a Bathroom Stall is really only eighth or ninth, although, in all fairness, Prongs might disagree. In fact, James might disagree loudly and frequently and perhaps in three languages, but then, James really needn't know. Moony, on the other hand, for all his Maraudery scheming, is practically pure as driven snow, and Sirius knows he is over the line. Fortunately, Sirius has always been of the mind that lines were made to be not only crossed, but, at times, run past, taunted, or patently ignored.

"What if someone walks—" but Sirius swallows the rest of the sentence. The whispered anxiety is lost between their lips.

As their mouths move, Sirius presses on, slipping his hands beneath the hem of Remus's already un-tucked shirt and letting his fingers trace the myriad of scars on his torso. Again, Remus stills, his eyes wide.

"Siriuuuusss," he hisses, his hand falling from Sirius's hair to bat away Sirius's rogue fingers.

Sirius cocks his head to the side in what he knows to be his most charming innocent-puppy impression and slides his hand a little further up Remus's shirt. He knows that Remus doesn't like his scars, but he also knows that he really wants to get Remus out of his shirt, so he sincerely hopes Remus will just _get over_ said dislike, quick like, because when you get down to it, Sirius was _there_ when most of those scars came to be, and it's not as though he himself doesn't have a few stray scratches from the very same encounters.

And _there_, yes, he does seem to be getting over it, because now he's arching his back and there's no space between them. Sirius rather likes the way Remus's body sort of curves against his, and thinks that, perhaps, they fit together a bit too well for this to not be alright.

It certainly _feels_ more than alright—it feels like getting away with _murder_, except with fireworks and inebriation and a jelly-leg jinx, all twisted together and tied-up in a knot in the center of Sirius's chest. It feels like something that's been waiting to happen, he just took _so_ bloody long figuring it out, but now that he has, it's standing there waving and saying "well hello there, what in the hell took you so long?"

It feels like free-fall in the pit of his stomach, but then he's suddenly lost his footing, and the floor in here is really rather disgustingly slick, and now he's grappling at Remus's arm trying not to fall over because nothing says passion like getting sewer water and bits of damp toilet paper stuck in one's unusually shiny hair.

And then he does fall over. Fuck.

"Ohgodsareyoualright?"

"No," Sirius replies, without bothering to move. The floor looked shiny and slick, but in actuality it is slightly sticky, and not at all the type of surface one would voluntarily lie down on. In fact, given the option, one might trade large bags of galleons _not_ to lie down on this type of floor, but Sirius regrets he was given no such option and cringes a little at the sensation of what is, at best, toilet water seeping through his robes.

"Actually, I think I am dying, have died. Oh great buggering fairies, this is absolutely disturbing."

"Come now, Sirius, at least no one ever uses this bathroom, it could be so much worse."

"Oh you're right, whatever's all over me has had about fifty years to get cozy on this floor and now I'm mercilessly tearing it away from it's natural habitat."

"You're being dramatic."

"No, honestly Remus, I think I've made it angry. Look! I think it's trying to eat my scalp! Is my scalp still there Moony? It burns, it burns!"

"When you're done behaving like a three-year-old you might consider getting off the floor—I think that greenish-purply thing is making a move for your left foot."

"Oh Christ! I need that foot, it's my favorite one!" Sirius squeals in a voice that would be absolutely _gay_ coming from anyone else, and gets to his feet with an awkward lurchy movement that would resemble a dance move, were it not for the look of impending death on his face.

"Right. Well, let's get out of here," says Remus calmly. He straightens his shirt in what Sirius can't help but think of as a Moony-like gesture, and pushes the hair from his eyes.

"What, you don't want to snog me now that I'm covered in loo?"

Remus turns an unnatural shade of scarlet and lets out a painful sounding series of _ugghmmff_s and _eehkkhh_s, giving him the distinct look of someone choking on a tamale.

"Relax, you old prude, I wouldn't expect you to passionately embrace someone wearing a robe that may very well be housing hostile life-forms," Sirius says, pulling something unidentifiable and soggy from behind his ear and flicking it away.

"Yes, well," says Remus, moving towards the door, "It's not as though this has been _entirely_—I mean, that is to say, I did actually have things to be doing, you know—and not Maraudery things, either—real, school work, read a book and write about it things. But all that being, well, being what it is (I mean, what else would it be?), I suppose this was rather, erm—What are you doing?"

Sirius looks up at him, his nipples getting embarrassingly hard in the cool, night air.

"That robe was unsanitary."

Remus looks like he might spontaneously combust. It's not a good look for him, Sirius thinks, but then realizes he is, actually, the one without a shirt on, and as such is probably not in any position to be judgmental. And come to think of it, has his bellybutton always looked so bloody _weird_?

"I took it off."

"That you did," Remus says quietly, and his face goes completely blank.

"And the shirt was, er... Not a good shirt."

"No, I suppose it wasn't," he says matter-of-factly. His eyes are wide and long lashed and shockingly bright.

"Come here," Sirius says quietly, trying to sound every bit as confident as he absolutely does not feel so that perhaps he can trick Remus into thinking that he's thought this through, which he certainly has not. Unfortunately, it works, and now Remus is just standing there, too, too close, and Sirius can't for the life of him think of what to do next, so he kisses him, which is something Sirius often does when he's not sure what else to do, although, admittedly, not like this.

In fact, he's never actually kissed like this before. He's snogged his fair share of giggly Hufflepuffs and weak-kneed Ravenclaws, but there's something entirely different at work here. It's as though he knows the dance steps but can't quite remember the order. Or hear the music. Or feel his feet.

This time, Remus barely flinches when Sirius pushes up his shirt. It's not terribly practical, having a wad of wrinkly fabric shoved between their chests, but the concept of "buttons" seems horrid and strange just at the moment, so Sirius ignores this fact. There's a helpless struggle of lips and angles, and their noses bump together in a way that he imagines should be awkward but somehow isn't, and they're back against the wall, but this time Sirius is sure to grab hold of the sink beside him so that there are no more delays due to slippage of any sort.

Which raises the question of what exactly he is trying to do here, and to be honest, he's not entirely sure. He wanted something from all this. He wanted to find out For Bloody Sure if Remus was what was making his fingers twitch and his lungs feel too big and his stomach swirl. He wanted to see if he was really obsessed with _chocolate_ cake, or if it was the mere _idea_ of cake, in the abstract, that he was drawn to, with chocolate cake being a symbol for all—

Remus makes a little keening sound and bites Sirius' lower lip.

No, it's definitely the chocolate cake.


	2. Very Nice Things

Remus grins.

He can't seem to stop. During classes, in the corridor, in the common room—even this close to the full moon—he keeps getting this odd, tight feeling in his cheeks and that's when he realizes he's been grinning like a fool for who knows how long, and now his face is about to fall off. It's _embarrassing_, to be honest, and every time he notices it, Remus consciously schools his face in to a slightly manlier, less insane expression, but the damage has been done. People have started to notice.

And by people he, of course, means Sirius. Which seems fair enough, as Sirius is undoubtedly the cause (unsurprisingly, since Sirius is nearly always responsible for Remus embarrassing himself).

It's not that he'd _wanted_ it to happen, really, it's just that once it had, everything seemed to click into place, and he realized with a sort of zen-like feeling of "Oh. Right then." that he'd just solved a puzzle he hadn't known he was working. It was as though Sirius provided the answer to a question Remus was still trying to ask. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask, actually, in the dizzy, not-quite-dignified moments following Sirius's surprise attack in a bathroom beneath cover of darkness, like what _exactly_ they were doing, or whether or not they were going to keep doing it, and when, and for how long. There are also mundane things he wants to know, like whether Sirius is in the habit of snogging unsuspecting Prefects in bathroom stalls, and if so, how had he measured up? But somehow Remus gets the distinct feeling that it isn't alright for boys to ask those sorts of things, so he keeps his queries to himself. If he voices them, he might start sounding like James, pathetic and high-pitched, with all the manliness of runny pudding.

He does not, however, keep his _hands_ to himself. Not after well over a decade of keeping his hands to himself and only to himself, and not very often, at that. Not anymore. Now he keeps his hands to Sirius's hands, beneath tables, under pillows, when no one is looking. He keeps his hands to Sirius's clothes, and Sirius's hair, and to Sirius's untold expanses of skin.

He really does have an obscene amount of it, skin. It seems to unfurl endlessly everywhere Remus touches, so that for every inch he learns, there are immense stretches as yet uncharted. And these, Remus thinks, are the sorts of Girl Thoughts that Sirius teases him for having. Or at least, Sirius did tease him, until Remus decided to simply _shut the hell up for, heaven's sake_ to avoid further mockery.

They are lying in Remus's bed. They tried Sirius's bed once, but Remus got his hand stuck in something unbelievably gooey on the bedpost, and a low, growly sound emanated from under the never-made covers, so they resolved to hence forth inhabit Remus's bed for the purposes of innocent canoodling and not-so-innocent canoodling. They are clothed, of course, or very nearly, wearing oxfords and underpants, which is odd, since, despite some initial groping and generally blush-worthy behavior, there has been very little canoodling that did not involve at least a few layers of fabric keeping things English. Remus is absently worrying the loose skin of Sirius's kneecap, pulling at it and pinching it between his thumb and forefinger.

"Tha's my knee," Sirius drawls.

"Really? It looks a bit like a python 's swallowed a cricket ball," says Remus, dryly. He's only half listening, while some uncontrollable part of his brain groans and smokes and emits a sound not unlike a steam whistle in a muggle cartoon.

"Then why are you being so nice to it, eh? It might eat your arm."

"I am attempting to appease it," Remus says, running his fingers over the thin, wrinkled skin.

"Well, then you are in luck, dearest Moony. For I am, in fact, the Master of My Knee Python, and I am amenable to bribes."

Remus, who has been staring intently at the way Sirius's skin ripples when his muscles twitch, glances up to see Sirius looking evil and alluring. "And what are your terms?"

Sirius's smile twists at the corners of his mouth, and he looks at Remus with clear, gray eyes, one of which is obscured by hair. He's taken to keeping it longish and generally in his eyes, a decision Remus has publicly declared to be both "silly" and "unseemly" (despite privately thinking of it as "brilliant," and "disturbingly attractive," and "nggghffkk.")

"I shall require a gesture of submission on behalf of my snakey subject."

Remus snorts with laughter before catching the deadly serious, I-am-committed-to-this-bit gleam in Sirius's eye. When he's sure he won't giggle again and make Sirius pout, he says, "I am sure that's something I can manage." And he kisses Sirius firmly on the mouth.

The warm, soft and yet hard pressure, and the strange gooey feeling it evokes in Remus's midriff are still new and exciting, so much so that Remus doesn't mind that Sirius is ridiculous, or that he is dragging Remus, lips first, into his messy world of bizarre gags and surrealist humor. In fact, he thinks he could get used to it.

"Now _that_," Sirius says, looking smug, "is what I call a bribe. Well done, little Moony," he adds, despite the fact that Remus has been taller since Fourth Year.

"Perhaps I should go into politics," Remus says.

Sirius looks horrified and says, with overdramatic flourish befitting an aristocrat, "And have you bribing all sorts of dirty, greasy-bearded officials? I shall never allow it!"

After a moment, Sirius says "I'm glad. About your arms. Their not being eaten by my knee, I mean." And then his brow furrows and he looks very sincere. It's an odd look, and one that Sirius does not often display, making it even weirder. But it's sort of endearing too, and Remus fights a smile.

"I rather like them, you arms. They're, they are _nice_," he adds in a tone heavy with meaning. "And the left one has that little patch of freckles, the one that looks like a sheep. I named it, did I tell you? The sheep, not your arm. 'Chauncey' I call him. He likes it, I think."

"You named my freckles 'Chauncey'?" Remus asks. Something strange, strange in the way that Sirius being sincere is strange, blossoms in Remus's stomach, unbidden but surprisingly welcome.

"I did not name your freckles. I could not name _all_ of your freckles if I wanted to. You have more freckles than I have swooning admirers, and they are _legion_. I only named the sheep _in your freckles_. And if you don't like the name you should have voice your objections when I decided on it. You were asleep, I think, but that's hardly any excuse."

"Sirius, you named my sheep-shaped freckles 'Chauncey'?" Remus repeats. If he had known, so many weeks ago, that allowing himself to be finagled into a bathroom stall by a puppy-brained pervert with a pension for surprise attacks of snogging would lead to so much bizarre and stomach-tingling behavior, he would have allowed himself to be finagled eons ago. Like when Sirius first started finagling.

Sirius leans in very close, his hand curving against the boney crest of Remus's hip, and says, quietly, "Yes. I did. I like them. They're nice."

Remus snorts. "How can freckles be nice?"

"I don't know, but yours are. You have nice freckles. And I know from freckles. Do not question me." Sirius raises an eyebrow, daring Remus to defy him. So Remus kisses him out of spite. But that part of Remus's brain, the unnamed, untouchable, whirling part keeps whirling. His arm is falling asleep, jammed between their bodies, and now Sirius's hair is in _Remus's_ eyes, and _buggering hell, it doesn't matter_, chimes in another part of Remus's anatomy, wholly unrelated to rational thought.

Sirius hasn't shaved, and his mouth tastes like the biscuits he was eating earlier _in his bed_, to Remus's horror. He smells of puppy dander, and his hair is tangled when Remus runs his fingers through it. He is the Spectacular and Legendary Sirius Black, but to Remus he is the imperfect and spectacular mess that Remus feels the ridiculous urge to touch _all the bloody time_.

Sirius puts his fingers at the base of Remus's jaw, and at the place where his shoulder and neck meet. Their mouths work against one another like a search for some unknown secret, hidden between tongues and teeth. _It should always be like this_, Remus thinks. _We should always be like this_, he means. Quiet and furious, lips clashing violently, silently with closed eyes guiding their blows and stuttering breath fueling the slow-then-fast crescendo of graceful motion. Motions lead-heavy with meaning and hazy in the fog of lust that teenage brains produce where teenage skins meet.

Sirius rolls over awkwardly, pinning Remus to the bed with a long leg on either side of Remus's body. And the way they are sitting, the way their hips press together and the unstoppable rhythmic of ebb and flow of pressure makes Remus's head feel like it's going to fall off, though it won't matter, because he's also sure his brain has begun to melt and ooze out of his ears. And it's _wonderful_, in a way that he never thought anything could be wonderful for werewolves with scars and more books that might be deemed healthy and compulsively tidy beds. Remus reaches up and wraps his arms around Sirius's back. It's a subconscious gesture, one of possession, but also one of protection. A gesture that says, from the unplumbed depths of Remus's canine subconscious, that Sirius _is his_, no matter how terrifying that may be. It feels like setting his heart on legs and letting it wander out in to the world, it is that sort of horrifying vulnerable feeling.

After, when Remus is busy sloshing his head back together, piece by melted piece, Sirius snuffles warm loud breaths against his neck.

"That was new," Sirius says into Remus's skin, pulling the sheet up to their chins. He throws a leg casually across Remus at knee level, and Remus wonders when that sort of thing became casual and also what he did before it was. And he wonders where on earth his clothing has gone.

"Yes. That was," Remus confirms. His body feels oddly light, like it might float away without Sirius's weight pinning him down. In the dim light, it almost looks like Sirius is blushing, but Blacks do not blush, so surely it's just the red-tinge cast by the draperies surrounding the bed.

"But, but not _bad_ new, yeah?" Sirius says.

Remus looks down at him, puzzled. "I—no, I think not. But _new_, certainly."

"Yes, new, that. But someday it will be old, right? I mean, when we've had a bit of practice. If we practice. If you want—bugger. You know what I mean," Sirius blurts out. He's digging his forehead into the crook of Remus's neck, fiercely, and refuses to be dissuaded. Remus pauses a moment and furrows his brow contemplatively.

"Sirius, as usual, there is a flaw in your reasoning. Because that, unless I'm very much mistaken, is never going to get old. Even with practice, which there should be lots of."

Sirius ceases burrowing and looks up at Remus with big, googley eyes, a goofy grin. "Right. You're absolutely right, Moony, as per usual. You're too bloody clever, Remus, it's irritating."

"I will work on that," Remus says quietly. And with that, Sirius goes limp, completely at ease. When he thinks about all the places they are touching, knees and hands and hips, Remus has difficulty separating the "I" from the "him," as though they are one large, boy-shaped entity, breathing and sighing and snuffling as one. It's wonderful, this feeling of "us" and not "I," because it is a product of knowing that no matter what, somewhere in the great Out There, there will always be a boy-nearly-man who lay awake one night staring at his freckles. And naming them.


	3. Nicely Worrying Things

It is so very lucky that it is Christmas, or nearing it, and that their fellow Marauders have gone off on their separate, equally exciting holiday adventures, Peter to Russia with his aunt, and James to India with his mum and dad. Normally, Sirius would have been terribly jealous and demand to be brought along as their esteemed and only slightly irritating guest, but as it turns out, he finds himself having an equally exciting, terrifying adventure right here in the Gryffindor dormitory. Remus lets out a low, rumbly sound in his sleep, and his foot finds Sirius's foot, and Sirius's brain says, quite sensibly, "annggkkk!" It's not as though Sirius had even meant to fall asleep in Remus's bed of all places, it's just that he was so comfortable and warm, and Remus has exactly the right sort of shoulder for sleeping on.

Unfortunately, Sirius has been awake for a while now. He's not sure when he woke up, or when he opened his eyes, and time isn't helping things. It keeps frolicking across the room at odd angles, passing fast and then slowly, making itself impossible to keep track of. The only constant is the steady, quiet breathing beside him. Sirius sighs.

There was a time when he never lay awake and did not miss one moment of sleep when sleep was what he wanted, but now there are _things_, and they are loud, and they demand to be thought about. But Sirius Black does not Think About Things, on principle, particularly when said things are of a slobbery, sonnet-evoking, finger-and-toe-tingling nature, and especially not at night. In bed. With someone else. Except that these Things rear their noisy, thinkable little heads at the most inopportune moments.

There had been nymphs, in the dream he'd been having—no, not having, _enjoying_. Lovely, dancing, leaf covered (or half-covered) little nymphs that wanted nothing more than to cater to his every whim. His _every_ whim. They danced and frolicked and sparkled. They glowed. Glew? Sirius fumbles about his brain for a moment, summoning the voice of his thin, Latvian tutor who apparently did not spend enough time on verb tenses when Sirius was a child. Glowed, he decides, not that it matters. They were banished the moment Remus showed up, never to glow again. Sirius sighs again, louder.

It's incredibly annoying, being dream-angry. It's not Remus's fault. Real-Remus had nothing to do with it, as evidenced by his undisturbed, unThinking breathing, but Sirius still irrationally resents him. This is because, simply, real-Remus inspired dream-Remus, and dream-Remus made the pretty little nymphs go away. Just as things were beginning to get interesting and foliage was being shed, Remus's face had appeared, with furrowed brow and twisted mouth. Then Remus's body had shown up, because even Sirius's subconscious apparently feels that Remus's face is just fine, but not nearly so fun without the rest of him. And Remus had looked so _concerned_ that the nymphs said they would be going because it looked like the two of them needed some time alone.

And then, horror of horrors, no one took off their clothes. Sirius grumbles a little, quietly. In his _own bloody dream_, everything had stayed completely family friendly. It's sick, that's what it is. Though they hadn't had to talk, fortunately, because Sirius already knew what Remus, be he dream or be he real, was going to say. And not just because it was all happening in Sirius's own head, giving him the godlike power to make Remus say things like "Oh Sirius, you are handsome as you are mighty, ravish me here, on this bed of marshmallows and other tasty things" (which he does, often, much to real-Remus's dismay. Because real-Remus somehow just _knows_.) He knows what dream-Remus is going to say, because he's been waiting weeks to hear real-Remus say it.

_What are we doing? _Sirius imagines what it will sound like when Remus says it, the way it will start of quietly, unassuming, and gain in volume and confidence by the time he gets to the final syllable. Sirius can also imagine the cold heat that will creep over him when this conversation finally takes place.

Except that it _hasn't_. Remus hasn't said one girlish, besotted thing since Sirius went completely insane and snogged the daylights out of him in a filthy bathroom and muttered something bizarre about cake as a metaphor. It's unnerving. It's so unnerving that Sirius wishes they would have it out already just to be done with the suspense.

Remus shifts in his sleep and curls his hand against the center of Sirius's chest. He breathes on, slow and deep, with his mouth extremely close to Sirius's shoulder. The foggy heat of Remus's breath leaves Sirius's skin feeling warm and damp, but he can't bring himself to care.

Dream-Remus is a prick, anyhow. Dream-Remus doesn't move his lips in his sleep, and he isn't warm and soft in exactly the right places, and long and lean everyplace else. Dream-Remus, unlike his waking counterpart, does not make Sirius feel like there is something in his veins other than blood, like champagne or tiny, excitable jellyfish. Nor does dream-Remus make Sirius feel like such a pathetic _teenager_, and all that this entails, at the most inopportune and inappropriate times, or at least when dream-Remus does, he follows through. Not that Sirius is complaining. Much. But just because they're in the middle of the Great Hall doesn't make Remus's hands any less nimble looking, nor does it make his lips look any less like something Sirius would like to bite, so it doesn't seem fair that Sirius should have to suffer (sometimes for hours at a time) while Remus is completely oblivious with his "stop it, Sirius" and his "you're making a scene," or, worst of all, his "wait till we get upstairs…" which only compounds the problem, as though the mere _possibility_ weren't maddening enough.

"Whrrryou awake?" A fuzzy, sleep-laden voice murmurs. The sound vibrates against Sirius's chest, tingly and soft.

"How do you know I'm awake?"

There is a long pause, then Remus props himself on his elbow and stares down at Sirius in the dark. "Because you're talking," he says, with great effort. The fog of sleep is almost visible around him, a soft-focus halo.

"Well now, aren't you on top of things," Sirius teases. He likes this Remus, half-asleep and befuddled. "But I'm only talking because you talked to me first."

Remus scrunches his whole face amusingly and opens his eyes again, looking slightly more alert. "Because you weren't breathing like you were asleep, and I'm too bloody clever, remember?"

Sirius wonders momentarily about the implications of Remus knowing how he breathes when he's asleep, but promptly dismisses it because of the floaty way it makes his extremities feel.

"So why are you? Awake?"

"Because. I could not sleep. I was... Thinking," Sirius forces himself to say.

Remus squints down at him. He looks like he's concentrating very hard on staying vertical and not unconscious. "You were what now?"

Sirius frowns. "I was Thinking, Moony, alright? What's itta you?"

"Nothing, of course," he says, and raises an eyebrow. "S'just that you don't think unless it's about how to get us expelled, and if you've taken to thinking about that at night I don't know _what_ you're going to do during lessons. My god man, you might accidentally learn something. Careful, there."

Sirius glares, but it is half-hearted. Remus lays his head on Sirius's shoulder and looks up at him, his eyes like large saucers of coffee. He wonders if Remus can hear his heartbeat. Sirius takes a deep breath. There are moments meant for calculated speeches, carefully planned soliloquies with anachronistic words like "thou" and "thee," and then there are moments meant for filling one's lungs with air and pressing that air out in the shape of whatever needs to be expressed, and for hoping against hope the air forms words and phrases and convincing arguments, and not inarticulate noises.

"Remus, I was thinking about you. Not in the pleasant way, you know, the way I like, the way you say you don't appreciate but I know you secretly relish—don't argue, I _know_ things—but in that way that I think about lessons. Or the future. A much less pleasant way, am I making sense?"

Remus goes very still. He'd been rubbing his thumb against the bony edge of Sirius's ribcage, which Sirius didn't notice until he stopped.

"You think about me like you think about your homework?" He says in a flat voice.

"Yeah, well, it's irritating, you know? Because I don't _want_ to think about you like that. I want to think about you like _ho ho ho_ and with a wink and a nudge, but I _can't_, because, because it's this: your face in my head looks all frustrated and it makes all the pleasant, winking thoughts and the lovely little nymphs flee, and I'm left with that feeling that you get in your stomach when you haven't been practicing your wandwork and McGonagoggles is staring at you with that_ stare_. You know the one. Well, perhaps _you_ don't, you always do your wandwork, but you know what I mean, yeah?"

"Like the face Slughorn makes when I've just melted my second cauldron of the day and turned some unsuspecting Hufflepuff's foot into a radish?"

"Yeah! It's like that. It's just, it is, it's like that."

Remus exhales loudly and rolls onto his back. Their shoulders, broadened with encroaching adulthood and slack with exhaustion, still touch, cannot help but touch on the narrow bed, but Sirius gets the distinct feeling that Remus is trying to shrink himself away.

"Yes. I see," Remus says quietly.

Sirius lifts his head to look at him. "No, no I don't think you see."

"Well, it is very dark in here," Remus spits sarcastically.

"Shut, just, no, you don't." Sirius bites his lip very hard. Damn Remus and his wanting to talk about Things but not wanting to talk about wanting to talk about them. Something about this thought strikes Sirius as wrong and possibly the root of all his confusion and upsetting Thinking, but he brushes it aside. Now is not a time for thinking. Now is a time for action.

He kisses Remus, sideways.

He stops thinking for a moment.

"That! That is how I want to think about you. Or not think about you. That!" Sirius whispers triumphantly.

"You want to think about me with my nose in your cheek and with, with, with _morning_ breath?"

"Yes! And I want to think about you with your nose and your breath and your hair and your hands and that stupid way your mouth goes crooked when you're staring at me like _Sirius, You Are Mad_."

"I do not."

"You're doing it now. And I want to think about you anyway! I want to think about you a lot of the time, actually, in a lot of ways. But not like lessons."

Remus rubs the bridge of his nose delicately. "Alright. Then what will make me less analogous to human homework?"

Sirius takes a deep breath. He takes another. He takes another and realizes that if he keeps stalling he will hyperventilate and die and never have to _have_ this conversation, but that will leave Remus in bed with a corpse, which doesn't seem sporting.

"I think we should just fucking talk about this thing. The thing that we're doing."

"Sleeping?"

"No—The thing that we _are_. The us thing. The you and me—The thing, Moony, the thing!"

"Oh. That. Yes, well I—"

"And I know you want to talk about it, Remus. You do, because you always want to talk about things and I, I _don't_, really, except that knowing it's bothering you is bothering me, which isn't fair to me, is it?"

"I—"

"So let's. Let's, you know, talk. About it. _It_, Remus."

"Yes, you keep saying that, but I don't know what there is to say, exactly. We, we are us. And, I don't know, we kiss, apparently, and do things that are not kissing but are similar in nature. What is there to say?"

Sirius frowns. He hadn't been expecting this. Suddenly he starts to think that perhaps he wants the talking to occur more than Remus, and he doesn't like this idea one bit, but it insists on feeling truer every second.

"I don't know. But can we just... Well, I think, I think this. I think that I think about you so pleasantly and unpleasantly because my brain is all wrong. And I want to know what you're thinking, which is stupid, I know, but it is what it is. Oh gods."

Remus makes a little noise in his throat, like wet laughter being suffocated. Sirius looks at him. Remus chuckles again, and this time the sound makes it halfway out of his mouth before being repressed. Finally he lets out a low, rumbling laugh that builds and spills out all over the place.

"What? What is _wrong_ with you? I am being pathetic and, Christ, _metaphorical_, and you are laughing! _What is the matter with you?_" Sirius shrieks, a little girlishly.

"No, Padfoot, I'm sorry. It's just, I've been working _so_ bloody hard to not talk and now you're like a verbal geyser and I'm, I think about things, Sirius. I do. But I guess I decided I'd rather keep,_ you know_, the kissing and similar things, with you, than talk about it and bugger it all up."

Sirius thinks about this for a moment. He thinks about Remus's frowny dream-face, and about the poor displaced nymphs who longed to amuse him in any number of unspeakable ways, and he thinks about the place where their shoulders touch, though he doesn't know why. And then he says, "No, I won't let it. This is not bugger-up-able. This is—it's just _us_, isn't it? Why is this so hard?" He makes a low, crackly sound in the back of his throat that he hopes expresses the deep and growing frustration in his chest.

"Because I think we're too worried about it?" Remus asks, though it isn't even a question. Not _really_. It's true, and as soon as it is out there, in words, Sirius realizes how obvious it was all along.

Because a Remus is a worrying thing to Sirius. James he doesn't worry about. He knows that James is and will always be his best mate, because he's James and he's unflappable. But something about Remus, the grown-up words and the skinny boy-wrists and ankles, the way his smile is always tinged with something Sirius doesn't yet understand, the vast weight that settles in the color of his irises and in the set of his jaw when he thinks no one is looking, makes Sirius worry. A miasmic sort of worry that is impossible to touch or hold or quiet. And it occurs to him that it has been this way for as long as he can remember.

When they were First Years, Sirius was still the Black heir and every bit as carefree and ridiculous as one might expect. Remus was a knobby little thing, with careworn sweaters and that wizened grin. Sirius loved making Remus grin, because he was eleven and he loved making anyone grin, but Remus especially. But he _worried_, too, in a way that eleven-year-olds never ever worry. Remus would disappear nights and reappear like a drowned rat, and Sirius cannot count the hours he spent in the Hospital Wing, with chocolates and jokes or with fake illnesses when Remus had to stay the night. Because that's what mates did, but also because he worried about little Remus adrift in a sea of sterile hospital sheets and strange smelling salves. He couldn't help it.

As they've grown up, new and even more alarming worry has blossomed, without encouragement. Sirius, who is at home everywhere with everyone, feels like his body is all at once too large and too small when Remus is around. He feels like a little boy, but with an unchildlike heat in his cheeks. He worries he will break Remus, so that he shatters at the scars into dozens of geometric pieces that Sirius will never be able to reassemble. And all of this, all these awkward, terrible, wonderful feelings in his stomach worry Sirius.

"I'm not going to break you," Sirius says, for his own benefit. The words leave his body without any regard at all for his brain, but it's alright. He knows Remus will understand.

Remus slides his eyes to Sirius's face and says, quietly, "I know. Me either."

And Sirius kisses him again, less sideways this time, because he rolls over onto Remus's long, lean body with the soft spots in all the right places and the warmth that makes Sirius's cheeks pink. Remus's hands race along Sirius's back, touching and skimming, fingers digging hard into Sirius's shoulder. His mouth is warm and dark, and Sirius runs his teeth along Remus's lower lip making Remus shiver and stutter something like "ahhh." This is not the heated, ambitious kissing of earlier, with ends and means and goals. It is simpler, more alarming. It is kissing because it drives the thought right out of Sirius's very thinking, throbbing brain. It is kissing because it quiets the worry that Sirius feels with his whole self, every time Remus is in the same room, let alone bed. It is kissing because not touching Remus makes Sirius feel like he's missing something exciting. He wants to do it every second of every day until he forgets _how_ to think, but he harbors the secret belief that Remus is going to notice, sooner rather than later, that Sirius is an idiot and a teenager and not worthy of being pasted to Remus's face. Which is why Sirius is determined to get in as much face-bonding as possible before Remus wises up.

Their mouths move against each other like puzzle pieces, with sharp edges and complicated shapes. They never quite fit, but they can't quite come apart either. Remus sighs. Sirius thinks it's lovely. The heavy fog of sleep seeps into their senses, dark and warm, like wine in their limbs. When he pulls back, Remus smiles up at him, hair more askew than normal, eyes heavy-lidded and unfocused.

"I _worry_, you know?" Sirius says quietly, shifting the bulk of his weight back to his side of the narrow bed. He leaves his right arm and leg across Remus's body, curling into his side like a child.

"I do, too," Remus whispers, and smiles. Sirius suddenly worries that the strange, electric feeling in his stomach might not be worry after all, but something infinitely more alarming. But he shuts his eyes and listens as Remus's breathing evens out, and decides that worry is such a very small price to pay.


	4. Worryingly Vague Things

"I want spätzle."

Remus glances over the top of his book at Sirius's fretful face. He's been listing increasingly bizarre foods for the better part of an hour in an attempt to identify _exactly_ what he is in the mood for. All manner of dishes that could be easily managed by the House Elves have been suggested by Remus and quickly dismissed by Sirius, and over the last few minutes suggestions have strayed firmly into the territory of the exotic bordering on the imaginary. Sirius mentioned something about a chicken stuffed with strudel when Remus was last paying attention.

"Do you know what that is?" Remus asks mildly.

"It's... It's like a sausage, right?"

"It's egg noodles."

"I said _like_ a sausage, didn't I?"

"And it is. Like a sausage. In the way the Orion Nebula is like an old shoe."

"I've never seen such cynicism in one so young."

"I'm not cynical, I'm _busy_. And you're hungry. Why don't you go and discuss the finer points of spätzle as it relates to the world of sausage with the kitchen staff. I'm sure your small elven friends would be happy to hike to Germany, if the need should arise."

Sirius sighs and looks disgustingly satisfied. "They do love me, the little food machines."

Remus tucks his legs beneath himself and is just settling in to a _really_ good study when Sirius plops down beside and throws his arm around Remus's shoulder. It's not that Remus _minds_ exactly. Actually, if he's being humiliatingly honest, he does the opposite of mind, if there is such a thing. He un-minds, which is, coincidentally, a fairly accurate description of what happens to his brain when Sirius is near. It's just that he has work that needs to be done, but of course he can't say this to Sirius because Sirius will say something like "well I have a few _things_ that need to be _done_, as well," and a few ridiculous eyebrow raises later, Remus will kiss him just to shut him up.

"It is a Thursday, Remus, a _Thursday_. Why are you doing homework?"

"Because there are, actually, lessons on Friday, whether you show up for them or not, and some of us are not going to pass on our dashing good looks and impeccable hair alone."

"Yes, but you're doing your _Potions_ essay, and you don't have Potions until Monday. What is wrong with your head, Moony?"

"Yes, I—but..." But Sirius has his nose in Remus's ear, which the Remus of six months ago would have found completely inappropriate, making it fortunate that the Remus of six months ago legged it for the exit when words like "canoodling" were first brought into the conversation (and not entirely without merit.) He keeps waiting for the day that this will no longer be interesting, or at the very least, no longer be simultaneously heart-stopping _and_ pulse pounding, as though that makes _any_ sense. But Remus's body obviously isn't concerned with what does or does not make sense, since it continuously explodes every damn time Sirius does that weird thing with his tongue.

Ah, yes, the thing that he is doing now. It's not as though they don't _do_ _other things_, things which are no less interesting and make Remus feel significantly more like he is going to die of over-stimulation. In fact, the primary reason they have not done _the thing_ that Sirius would most like to do in the entire world (besides enslaving the whole of Slytherin House) is not because Remus doesn't want to (badly. And frequently. At inconvenient times), but because he is afraid that he might literally _die_. Besides, this, just _this_, is quite enough, apparently, to leave Remus the consistency of undercooked spätzle.

The inappropriateness continues for several long and not entirely unpleasant moments, with Sirius's nose and lips trailing across the side of Remus's head sort of sloppily. Some small portion of Remus's brain, the part that does not give in to incapacitation of any kind, no matter how the rest of his body begs, lights up in outrage.

"Wait, Sirius, I—"

Sirius groans and flings himself onto his back on the couch, dramatically.

"You are _so_ difficult."

"I don't mean to be," Remus says apologetically.

Sirius smiles, small and sly.

"Yes, I know. And that is the _only_ reason I tolerate you." He sits back up and summons a tin of biscuits from across the Common Room. "And, also, because on the rare occasion that you do part company with your _other_ lover, the excessively long essay, you are quite the little harlot." Remus watches from the corner of his eye as Sirius crams sugar-coated confections into his mouth rather indelicately, unconsciously tucking his feet beneath Remus's thigh. A warm quiet descends over them, thick and heavy, disturbed only by the sounds of Sirius crunching and the fire doing its crackling best to defend against the chill of a crisp February night.

"You remember Angela, yeah?" Sirius says, out of what some might call "the blue" and others might refer to as "a general lack of conversational skills." It is only at this disturbance that Remus realizes how close he had been to dozing off.

"Was she the one that had the, you know, the teeth?"

Sirius rolls his eyes and says, "Yes, that was Tiny Teeth, as Prongs so lovingly referred to her. No matter how many times I pointed out the potential advantages of small teeth... Not that I would know first hand," he adds hastily, noting the way Remus's eyebrow attempts to unite with his hairline at the mention of "advantages."

"Alright, what about old Tiny Teeth? Didn't she move to Prague or something?"

"No, no, that was Jennifer—err, Slow Talker, as you might know her. No, Tiny Tee—Angela was the one that ran off with Richard wossasname after I wouldn't take her to," he crosses himself, "Madame Puddifoot's for Valentine's Day our Third Year. I was but a lad! How could I have been expected to endure such unending and gruesome torments?"

"Such gruesome torments. Violations of the Geneva Conventions, no doubt."

"You realize I only understand about two-thirds of the things that come out of your brain?"

"Is it up to two-thirds now?" Remus asks, dodging a well aimed pillow as it whizzes past his head.

"The point is, Angela asked me to... accompany her to the party we're throwing Saturday."

"Does she even go to this school anymore?"

"Yes, she—you are not listening properly, Moony. She wants me to _take her_ to the party. In what I'd imagine to be a date-like fashion."

Remus considers this a moment. The thought of Sirius being date-like with anyone, and Remus includes himself in this group, is not a particularly pleasant one. Dates are, in Remus's admittedly limited understanding, exercises in civility and polite conversation, where food and anecdotes are shared, and hopefully the quality of one of these two things makes it worth the effort. Sirius is not polite, civil, or particularly good to eat with in a public setting. And when feminine whiles and girl-bits are brought into it, Remus shudders to imagine the mayhem that might ensue. He fears the whole thing would be a complete disaster.

But he fears more deeply that it would _not_ be a disaster.

"Yes. Well. I suppose you'd better decide what you are to do then. Responding to invitations the day of is a bit gauche, I believe. But then I'm sure you'd know, being the resident aristocrat."

Sirius stares at him, eyes narrow and mouth slightly open.

"That's all?"

"That's all what?"

"That's all you have to say on the matter? An etiquette lesson? Which I don't even _need_, by the by." Sirius's back has gone very straight and his feet, still buried beneath Remus's leg, twitch and arch like angry, burrowing rodents.

"Sirius, I, well, I'm not sure if it's my _place_—actually, I'm not sure _what_ my place is in the first, uhm, place. In all of this. With you." The words fall from Remus's mouth, clumsy and unmanageable, like bricks tumbling from the back of a truck. Not at all the sort of nimble speech he'd been trying to evoke. It's just that everything about _them_ feels so incredibly fragile, possibly because he wants so desperately for it to not be ruined. It's the reason he hadn't wanted to have The Conversation Sirius expected him to want. It hadn't mattered. He's been secure enough in the belief that Sirius was just as alarmed and confused as he was, and that they were, in essence, together in their confusion.

And that was enough! But _now_, suddenly, some bird is in it with them, and Remus feels claustrophobic; however, he will not, _absolutely will not_ turn in to some clingy, desperate charity case, because to do so would be completely unattractive, and would make Remus feel like he is showing his hand, so to speak. Not just showing his hand actually, but rendering it in neon and having it mounted to his head.

Sirius stares at him, eyes searching frantically for comprehension.

"Not your place?"

"Not... I'm not saying this very well. Listen, I... I just think that I don't know if what I think counts, right? I mean, does it? We aren't—you and I are not, well, we're not _exactly_ anything, really, are we? I mean, as far as Tiny Teeth, and everyone else, is concerned, we're just... friends," Remus says, a little pathetically.

It has long troubled Remus that there is not a word for what they are, what they do. The English language has been Remus's faithful friend and companion since his near-mastery of it at the age of four, so this betrayal strikes him quite deeply. There are descriptions, obviously: pleasant, fascinating, scary, insane, wonderful. There are also verbs, like kiss, touch, hold, and canoodle. But there isn't a _term_, really, not in any practical sense.

What does one call a mutual enthusiasm for being melded together as much and as frequently as possible? And what about the fact that they are, above all else (or at least Remus _thinks_ it is above all else) best mates and Marauders, who are sworn in blood and sweat and manful-tears to remain as such until they are killed, preferably in some glorious and exploding fashion at the age of twelve million? There isn't a word for this sort of insanity, which makes Remus wonder sometimes if perhaps they are doing something they ought not be. Perhaps the reason there is not a word for it is because it is so wrong as to literally _be unspeakable_.

Except it doesn't _feel_ unspeakable.

Sirius extracts himself, feet first, from the couch and stands. His hair, which has been recently trimmed at Remus's behest, flops indignantly into his eyes as he looks down at Remus.

"No, you're exactly right. We aren't _anything_. Exactly. Angela will be thrilled. I, I'll see you later then, yeah?"

Remus feels his heart fall into his lower intestine. Before he can construct a detailed thesis on the subtle yet mind-bogglingly, insanely, earth-shatteringly crucial differences between not being "Anything _exactly_," and not being "_Anything_. Exactly," Sirius has been swallowed by the black mouth of the stairwell. He makes a note to peruse a thesaurus before Sirius gets up in the morning.

"Bugger," Remus says quietly.

The fire offers its crackly sympathy.

* * *

Sirius tiptoes to the toilet, minding the creaky floorboard by the doorway. There are few feelings so frustrating as tiptoeing around when all one really wants to do is bang things violently together. Peter is making odd, whimpery noises in his sleep, his left leg trembling wildly in the epic and eternal battle of Boy vs. Tangled Bedsheet. James snores on like a rock, or like he has been hit in the head with one. While he cleans his teeth, Sirius listens intently for the sounds of someone, of Remus, on the stairs, and prepares to launch himself into bed and pretend to be asleep, if necessary. But there is no sound, and his teeth are thankful for the thorough, if somewhat aggressive, cleaning they receive, and Sirius climbs into bed without launching.

What's irritating is that he's not even certain of what he'd been expecting. A little indignation on Remus's part, perhaps? A token resistance, to which he, Sirius, would immediately yield? It's not as though he wants to take out Angela bloody Suthers. He doesn't even want to take out _Remus_, for Christ's sake. He wants to _take _Remus, certainly, but not _out_. It seems to Sirius a bit absurd that he has just sworn to spend Saturday evening on a date he does not want to be on in order to spite someone he does not want to spite.

But what's more irritating, and indeed disturbing, is what he'd _wanted_ to happen. Some desperate, vulnerable part of him had hoped for screaming objections and possibly violence, followed by passionate and intimate apologies, right there, in the middle of the Common Room.

_Perhaps_, Sirius tries to convince himself, _it is for the best_. He wonders if this is the universe's way of warning him not to be such a complete nancy and to maybe enact a little self-preservation every now and again. He decides that this is as good a theory as any, and thinks that the best way to abide by it would probably be to just go on the aforementioned date and have a smashing time and prove that he does indeed still possess a pair of fully functional bollocks.

What's unfortunate is that he already turned Angela down (a knee-jerk reaction that he refuses to analyze), which means he will just have to make up for it by having a smashing time being the free-swinging, unfettered bachelor that he is. The gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach is probably just hunger. Probably.


	5. A Soporific Interlude

**Thank you all so much for the lovely comments! I'm having such a good time writing this, I'm glad I'm not the only one enjoying it (as occasionally happens when I start having too much fun).**

**There should be a real, full-length update in the next day or so, but in the meantime...**

* * *

"_The point is, Angela asked me to take her to the party we're having Saturday."_

"_She _what_?" Remus pops up off the couch like it's caught fire, and rounds on Sirius like a rabid horse._

"_She... she just _asked_, and I don't know, I thought I'd check with you. Or something."_

"_You're bloody right you check with me! Some trollop so much as bats her eyelashes in your general direction and I want a memo, signed and dated, in triplicate."_

_Remus's fingers twitch ineffectively at his sides and his eyes look like flaming butterbeer, which upon further inspection makes no sense, but that's the only way Sirius can think to describe it. He looks like some sort of raging mythical creature, and Sirius is torn between being frightened and quite pleased._

"_Alright, alright, Moony, objection noted! Merlin, it's not like I shagged her or anything."_

_Remus snorts indignantly. "Not bloody likely."_

"_And what is _that_ supposed to mean?"_

_Remus laughs. "Isn't it obvious? You are, frankly, a complete shirtlifter. I'm surprised wossername didn't pick up on it. I mean, has she any idea how many Bowie albums you own? And furthermore..." Remus pauses and pushes the hair from his forehead, looking a little uncomfortable._

"_And what? Do go on."_

_Remus stares at Sirius with a rare and wicked look that makes him shiver with delight when their eyes meet.  
_

"_You. You are totally, totally in love with me. And it shows."_

_Sirius tries desperately not to look away._

He wakes up clutching his pillow to his chest like an infant. Remus is snoring softly in the next bed.

"Oh," he whispers at the ceiling.

He pauses.

"Oh," he whispers again and crushes the pillow over his face.


	6. Things Can Always Get Worse

**Full chapter this time, I swear!**

* * *

Sirius takes a sip of his drink. He takes another. He takes another and sighs. It is going to be a long evening. Across the room he can see Angela sitting in some Ravenclaw's lap, but it doesn't bother him in the slightest. In fact, it startles him how very little he cares. He only notices because he thinks the Ravenclaw might have played Quidditch one year, but Sirius can't think of his name. Oh well.

She'd come over earlier, before the Ravenclaw showed up, and had sat on him, her pointy bones digging into Sirius's leg uncomfortably. Her lips were coated in something atrociously red and sticky, which he might have found irresistible a few years ago, but now found a little disgusting, and Sirius is pretty sure she got it all over the side of his head while she was muttering a variety of slightly suggestive things into his ear. But he doesn't care.

He's not here for her.

Remus has been missing for about an hour now (seventy-two minutes, to be precise) and Sirius is on the verge of tracking him down and cornering him and doing... _something_, but he hasn't worked out what that _something_ will be, and he doesn't want to risk unintentionally vomiting all over Remus's shoes. Because he does _feel_ like vomiting, but in a good way, somehow. But there is no such thing as good vomit when it is on one's shoes, no matter the intent.

Fortunately, at that moment Remus emerges from the portrait, looking disturbed and paranoid, his eyes darting around the room. Sirius knows what he is looking for. Remus is looking for him. Not that Sirius can blame him. He's done a rotten job of fixing things so far, especially since he didn't understand what needed to be fixed until now, but now, _now_ he has it. He just needs Remus stand still long enough to tell him about it.

* * *

Remus finds himself being followed by a floating pie of suspect origin. Years of experience with Marauder parties has taught him that _all_ floating food is suspect, but floating food of the dessert variety has a higher than average tendency to explode or turn unspeakable body parts equally unspeakable colors. He spots Sirius and James across the room, addressing an assemblage of First Years.

It's been odd, the last two days. Sirius has been around, of course, but it's like he's been a caricature of himself, all lights and sound but nothing behind the eyes. Not that Remus can complain. He's spent two solid days trying desperately to find words and expressions to match the things he feels need to be said, but after their falling out, if one can even call it that, Remus isn't even sure that Sirius wants to hear them. He's been so caught up in his own head that Sirius might be betrothed to what's her name with the teeth by now, for all Remus would have noticed.

Except, of course, that he would have noticed.

The pie nudges him.

"Moony! Lovely of you to join us, old chap. Come, let us walk," Sirius says, quickly shuffling Remus away from James and the awe-struck First Years. It is clear that Sirius has been indulging in some of the more illicit drinks present at this affair, as he has his hand on the small of Remus's back, though they haven't spoken _to one another_ in 48 hours. They've spoken in the same vicinity on several occasions, but it has been that sort of awkward avoidant talking that involves a lot of sideways glances and the forcible use of innocent bystanders to keep the conversation from grinding to a complete halt.

He supposes it shouldn't _be_ like this. They shouldn't have to _act_ friendly when they are in fact friends. They've been friends for six years and they've only been something besides friends for a few months. So why is this so hard? Why does it feel like they're pretending at something that was so natural before?

Before, when he didn't know what else there was. Before, when he'd never wanted to kiss Sirius in the middle of a sentence because he hasn't kissed him in two days and suddenly that feels like an impossibly long time.

Remus shakes himself. They are _still_ friends, and this is not the time.

"What is James doing with those small children?" Remus asks, ignoring the hand on his back and the face-melting awkwardness.

"Nothing! Bit of business. Have you seen the ice-sculpture then?" Sirius says, in possibly the most blatant distraction attempt since James had tried to avoid explaining a cow doing Bulgarian folk dances in the third floor corridor by complimenting McGonagall's bone structure.

"Yes, I saw it, and that gesture it's making is a bit lewd, even for you."

"Moony, I'm offended. It's not lewd, it's _art_, you philistine."

"Right, and I'm a pixie."

Sirius pulls a face but does not respond.

"And Padfoot, just what exactly _in the hell_ is wrong with this pie?" Remus asks a little irritably, indicating the pie, which seems to have gotten a bit testy of late, and is currently attempting to insert itself into Remus's left ear canal.

"Oh, they're supposed to float and entice, but we let Peter do the charm work on the first batch and well... It was rather touch-and-go for a bit there. Best to just eat it, mate. Only way to stop them, we've found. I wonder where this one was hiding when the other five charged us earlier."

"Charged? No, wait, _please_ don't tell me," Remus says, swatting absently at the pie. This only makes it angry, so he stops.

"Here, it's magic pie!" Sirius says, making extremely unnecessary wiggly Fingers of Magic in Remus's face. "It's whatever flavor you'd like. Chocolate, I'm assuming?" says Sirius, glancing not-so-subtly over his shoulder. Across the room, James seems to be instructing the First Years on something, and they, in turn, appear to be lining up in a rather military fashion.

"What is going on over there?" Remus demands.

"Well, if you _must_ know," Sirius replies, with an air of someone being pestered about their terribly nasty and private divorce, "James and I have decided that the time has come for us to choose our successors."

"They're marching. Sirius, why are they _marching_?"

And indeed, the First Years seemed to be one-two-stepping in place in front of a beaming James Potter.

"Well, you see Moony, it's important to ensure that our heirs respect and treasure our greatness, so that they may best benefit from the wisdom we will doubtlessly bestow upon them... Oh come on, you can play too! Please, Moony?"

"No! No, no, no, I will not be a part of your junta!"

"You're being overdramatic," Sirius says, but his casual dismissal is somewhat undercut when the marching rows give a simultaneous salute. James looks so happy Remus thinks his head is in danger of bursting.

"Does Evans know about all this?"

"Haven't a clue."

Suddenly, the pie gets up a flying start and smashes itself against the left side of Remus's head. It is, indeed, chocolate, Remus notes as he teeters and falls over in an graceless, chocolaty heap.

"Told you to eat it, mate," Sirius chimes in with an almost-straight-face.

"Yes, well, perhaps this will teach you not to bake bloody kamikaze desserts!"

And Sirius laughs insanely.

It would be sensible, Remus thinks, to collect himself and possibly attempt to remove the cream topping from his hair, with dignity, but right now he feels like having a good sulk, so he does.

Sirius squats beside him on the floor. Their faces are very close and Remus wants to tackle him, which is absurd, because even at their most _friendly_ Remus was never a tackler. Sirius looks him in the eye and runs his thumb along Remus's sticky cheekbone, collecting the chocolate filling. Remus bites his lip. Suddenly, he can't remember where they are or why there is pie on his head. Sirius sticks his thumb in his mouth and, with a little sucking sound, cleans away the chocolate remnants. Remus dies. He literally feels his head explode and his legs stop working and he is _dead_ of Sirius-related overload, so he can't figure out why his heart is still beating fifty times faster than it should be. Dead people's hearts don't beat at all.

"So, Moony, would you like to help us select the next generation of ne'er-do-wells?" Sirius says, jerking Remus violently from his thoughts. He doesn't stand up, and his voice is low and gravelly. And then he says, looking at the ceiling and the floor and not at Remus, "Or d'ya want to just uhm, talk, maybe, or something?"

Remus sighs. While he is generally of the opinion that talking is _always_ beneficial, talking is what got them into this mess in the first place, and as such Remus worries that it might actually compound the problem. And part of the problem is that Remus isn't even sure what the bloody problem _is_, so discussing it, he suspects, would be roughly as helpful as having one's head removed to fix a bad haircut. So, until he has fully sorted all the definitions and annoyingly ambiguous terms that will undoubtedly come up, Remus Lupin is mute on the subject. He is Marcel Marceau. He is a Carthusian Monk. He is going to have to think of something to say soon or Sirius is going to catch on that he is dead.

He says, "Padfoot, there is custard in my ear." And then he can't figure out why this was the first thing to pop into his mind. Sirius stands up. Remus watches as he shifts back into carefree Marauder mode. It's in the way he smiles and the looseness in his shoulders.

"Fine, grumpy git. Here," and Sirius tosses a flannel into Remus's lap. He then bounds away in a manner that Remus would like to categorize as "unwarrantedly enthusiastic" and, also, "exceedingly silly."

Then there is nothing left to do but sulk and, slowly, grow stickier and stickier. Unfortunately, "sticky" is one of Remus's least favorite sensations, bested only by "soggy" and "OHGODI'MONFIRE," both of which he finds himself proportionally better acquainted with the better acquainted he becomes with Sirius Black and James Potter.

Some undeniable sense of order and bloody reason, and a deep desire to get to bed this evening without a crusade or jihad being started in the common room, tells Remus that it is best to intervene in whateverthehell James is doing over there. Surely, it is best? Yes? Once a Prefect, always a Prefect, he supposes.

With a great deal of self-pity and an air of generally being hard-done-by, Remus detaches himself from the floor and from his brain, and edges into earshot of the assemblage of eleven-year-olds.

"Oh, look at the little saplings. They're so innocent. Can I have one?" He hears Sirius stage-whisper to James. And, Remus realises, if _he _can hear it, the half dozen potential delinquents between them can hear as well. Yet, they all seem pleased with this prospect. Brilliant.

"Shhh, not now_._ Besides, they're _my_ saplings. Go find your own," James says, glowing with pride.

"Eh, and what are _you_ gonna do with them anyhow? Teach them to stalk willowy red-heads and get kneed in the bollocks?"

James expression contorts ever-so-slightly, but he glosses over the intended insult, which is, after all, the absolute best way to _really_ annoy Sirius. It's almost cruel. Remus decides that if there ever were a moment to intervene, this is it.

"James, you cannot enslave the First Years," he says, slipping between the two neat lines of now scandalized looking children, and standing distinctly In James's Way. It's not often he feels the need to _really_ step in, being a Marauder in fact entails a general lack of step-in-ishness, but he's too _tired_, honestly, to be dealing with inner-school rebellions and pre-pubescent terrorist factions.

"Why not? I will be a kind and just master!" James replies, looking scandalized.

"Well, that explains why the little ginger kept calling him 'Tsar' at lunch," says Peter, emerging from the snack table and barging through the front lines. Remus thinks he can see James cringe as the ranks breakdown into anarchy.

"This has been going on _since lunch_?" Remus utters, completely baffled as to how a small yet rather alarming uprising could have been taking place beneath his nose for nearly twelve hours without his noticing.

"Come on, it's harmless, really," Sirius pipes in, looking helpful and innocent.

"The last time you said that, I was nearly trampled to death by a llama."

James makes a dismissive gesture with the hand that is not currently holding a tumbler full of something or other. "Oh, you make it sound so dramatic."

"I was naked and the llama was blue!" Remus spits in outrage.

"Turquoise," Sirius says, as though it explains not only the situation at hand, but also the Theory of Relativity, and, possibly, the popularity of the Bay City Rollers. He turns to find his drink and that's when Remus notices it, just there, on the creased edge of his collar. It's bright red, lip-shaped and hateful, and it stares at Remus like _What? Did you _really_ think he was going to sit around and wait for you to read four dictionaries and be neurotic?_

"I will, I will kill you. One day, I- I will just – all of you – and then – agghhh! Spells and smoke and, and - oh bugger it!"

"Pssh, calm down Remus," Sirius says casually.

"No! You just—you're a—I will not calm down, Sirius Black! Why don't _you_ go calm down in a corner somewhere with _your date_."

"But I don't have a—"

"Oh, of course not. You wouldn't want to be tied down."

"But Moony, I—"

And Remus has had quite enough, thank you. He stalks off to find a drink. Or a ledge.

* * *

"Alright, what did you do?" James says as Remus disappears into the crowd.

"Wha—I, me? What are you talking about?" Sirius splutters.

"You and Moony. Have you had a row or something? I mean, Merlin Sirius, did you threaten to freeze his bra again, because I think that really set him off last—"

"I didn't _do_ anything! And we're not having a row."

"_Yes_, you are. You just don't know it yet, apparently. All day it's been shifty-eyes and fleeing from the room, and seriously, Padfoot, what in the hell did you do?"

"I—Nothing. It's stupid."

"Well, fix it. We aren't kids," James says somberly, sipping his drink.

"What?"

"Look, all I'm saying is pretty soon we won't all sleep in the same room, and then if you make Moony angry, he won't have to put up with you. Or any of us. And besides, we shouldn't be fighting with each other."

James says this and looks Sirius directly in the eye. It's unnerving.

"Right, alright. It's just a bloody argument," says Sirius, chuckling nervously. "I'll set it to rights. You're such a nervous old maid, Potter, honestly."

James punches him, hard, in the shoulder, but smiles a little more easily.

Sirius made a solemn vow to himself at the age of twelve that he would never, under any circumstance, grow up. And so far, he's stuck to it. Hogwarts is like a bubble floating downstream: so long as you're in it, everything's the same, but the moment you're out you find that you're someplace entirely different from where you started. Sirius realises that all this time he's spent not growing up has been a waste, because in June adulthood will be upon them, whether he's ready or not.

And James, James his best mate and brother, is popping the bubble prematurely. It's not his fault, of course. Everyday it's something new—the muggles killed in Dorset on Hallowe'en, the shopkeeper found dead just before Christmas, the Hufflepuff Keeper's uncle who went missing not two weeks ago. It chips away at their smiles and their easy adventures, adventures in which they are always the shining heroes and they always win. Uncertainty lurks.

But all of that is on the horizon, there but distant.

Tonight, however, there are other concerns. Like, for instance, how he is going to make Remus talk to him, in complete sentences, without running away or shouting. He never knew before tonight, but Remus possesses the supernatural ability to summon a crowd of noisy, nosy onlookers every time Sirius gets up the nerve to broach The Subject. Because he feels that, at the very least, he needs to make Remus understand that this, what is happening between them, is serious, deathly so, and that there isn't time to fumble about with verbal impotence while their vocabularies struggle to catch up. And if Remus laughs or yells at him, or, worst of all, simply doesn't care, well, then Sirius will just have to crawl beneath the floor and slowly die, that's all.

He finishes his drink in one long sip. Being drunk seems like a fairly reasonable desire, because if he is going to be dying, he doesn't want to remember it in the morning.

"Here, Padfoot, you can have the cape, if you'd like," James says.

Sirius gets the feeling that he hasn't been listening for a while now, but he takes the large, red curtain he's being handed, and knots it dutifully around his neck. James puts on a crown that he appears to have manifested out of sheer power of will. Peter, he notices, is holding a scepter. Remus, he also notices, is gone. But they are anarchist royals, and their subjects are as eager as they are impressionable. And the night is young.


	7. Things Best Said

**Apparently, I'm going with a theme where each part gets longer and longer, until I am writing chapters the length of an actual Harry Potter book, but with slightly more explicit werewolf snogging. Enjoy!**

* * *

It is very late. It is so very late, it has gone past late and back around to early. Very early. Remus has been ready to go to bed for the better part of an hour, but it's taken him this long to clear the Common Room of all non-Gryffindors, conscious and unconscious alike. He feels somewhere between a bouncer and a high-strung mother who's come home to find her children in the middle of an unauthorized party. It is not a flattering comparison, he realizes, but he doesn't care. The call of his bed is so loud and strong, he could Apparate directly there, wards be damned.

And he's _annoyed_, as well. Not that he has a right to be, he supposes, but the combination of uninvited nausea at the thought of how Sirius managed to get lipstick _in his ear_ and the exhaustion of watching out for a room full of drunken teenagers has left Remus feeling like his head may explode and splatter all over the carpeting. He hopes it stains. And what's even _more_ irritating is how lovely a time Sirius seems to be having, as though he were not the most exasperating human being on the planet. He is unapologetic for his stupid smile that makes Remus dizzy and his stupid, stupid eyes that Remus sees everywhere, whether he wants to or not. It's just rude.

From across the room he hears: "Blast it all, my cape is falling!" And indeed, the red velvet drapery Sirius has tied around his shoulders is working its way down his back, rather determinedly.

"Har har, you've an arse-apron," slurs James, who appears to be melding with an armchair.

Remus shakes his head and grimaces as the possibility of immediate and eternal sleep slips quietly out of the room. "What happened to your First Years, Prongs?"

"There was a coup. I don't want to talk about it."

Remus cannot help but think this to be a good thing. His eyes automatically scan the room for Peter. In his experience, when there are intoxicated Marauders afoot, it is best to keep an accurate headcount. Marauders left unaccounted for lead to Bad Things and, on occasion, arson. The fact that there was a time, perhaps an hour ago, when James, Peter, and several First Years were missing is not something Remus wants to think about just now.

Without much trouble, he spots Peter's feet sticking out from behind a couch nearby. He is recognizable by his socks. If Hogwarts had a muggle annual, Peter would surely be voted Most Amusingly Mismatched Socks. Tonight, one is purple, and the other red and glowing. As Remus rounds the edge of the sofa, Peter stirs confusedly and runs a hand through his hair, smearing something orange and gloopy all over his head. He stares up at Remus, oblivious. Remus glances pointedly at Peter's left hand.

"Where did you get that goo?"

Peter opens his mouth a few times, mutters something about a bet and dubloons, and slumps back into unconsciousness.

"Oh bugger and blasphemy," Remus mutters, debating whether the Code of Ethics for Drunken Marauding requires he determine the nature of the orange goo and it's intentions towards Peter's scalp.

The goo bubbles, threateningly.

Remus sighs and tries to vanquish it. After several attempts, he is successful only in turning it a slightly less aggressive shade of orange. Finally, he settles for transfiguring it into a wooly orange hat. Peter hates wool. Serves him right.

He lays Peter on his side and eyes the glowing sock warily, trying to remember if it has always glowed. Remus decides it is not nearly as important as making sure that loud thump-thump-thumping noise now emanating from the other side of the room is not the sound of some First Year's untimely death via use as a battering ram. He steps from behind the couch to find James, now detached from his upholstered companion, slumped on the carpet, banging his head against the coffee table rather pathetically.

"What is it, mate?" Sirius offers, only just noticing James loud, thumpy distress.

James sits up and stares at Sirius like _My god man, can you not see this, the Vast and Looming difficulty that can only be resolved through self-inflicted head injury?_ and Sirius stares back like _Hello, what were we talking about?_

Before James can answer, they are interrupted by vomit. James's, to be specific.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Remus says, without malice. He is much too tired to be malicious, and, frankly, feels that he would prefer to save his malice, irritation, and general murderous hatred for the makers of Ogden's Finest, a "Mr. Ogden," presumably. Perhaps he will write a nasty letter.

"Brahahahaha!" Sirius shouts abruptly.

"WHAT?"

"...My arms are funny. It's your fault," he says, wiggling them in front of himself like so much angry seaweed. "You make them funny. Stop it."

"Your head is funny," Remus spits back, without looking.

"Moony, Moony, Moo-Ooo-Ooo-Knee," Sirius babbles, settling himself in James's abandoned chair, situating his "arse-apron" across his lap, making a traditional apron of it.

"Yes, Sirius?" Remus replies, attempting to convince James to pass out away from the sick-soaked carpet.

"I suspect that your full attentions are not, in fact, with me at present. Nor have they been for the last few days. And I think that you know this, and that you are being _actively avoidant_, if not obstinate."

Sirius has the annoying ability to summon a disturbing amount of intellect while drunk. Some might argue he saves all his pontificating for just such occasions. Some, Remus secretly believes, are right.

"You are correct, Mr. Padfoot. And unless you'd care to vomit _mor_e spectacularly than Mr. Prongs has just managed, my attentions are going to continue to be not-with-you. But I'm sure you can find attention elsewhere, if you're so inclined," Remus says stiffly. He's not doing this right now. He will not be ensnared in some intoxicated melodrama in the middle of the Common Room regarding Remus's personal stake in whom Sirius does or does not get his -- _ego_ stroked by. He will not do it.

Sirius nudges James gingerly with his foot, as though he were something disgusting that ought to be properly disposed of to avoid toxic run-off. "Bugger Potter, he's a right git anyway. He told me I wasn't as pretty as Evans."

Remus vanishes the vomit significantly more effectively than the orange goo, and brushes his hands together in self-satisfaction. "And where was Evans at the time?" Indulging Sirius is a knee-jerk reaction, like swatting at a fly or howling at the moon, but it also feels like good strategy—one unlikely to provoke conflict or the having out of underlying infuriation.

"On his lap, the tart," Sirius mutters, possibly louder than he intended.

James rallies from the dead long enough to swat at Sirius's ankles and grumble, before relaxing back into unconsciousness.

"Sirius, how much have you had to drink this _fine_ evening?"

He wants to add _because I hope it leaves you violently ill in the morning so that your stomach is as angry with you as I am_, but this would not be what one considers "keeping the peace," so he refrains.

Sirius raises an eyebrow alarmingly, and Remus can practically hear him debating what to say.

"I ask only so I may properly prepare myself for the inevitable fallout. The wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the soiling of perfectly good linens, and whatnot," Remus adds.

Sirius snorts in a most unflattering manner and says, "There shall be no fallout - soiling or otherwise. I am a gentleman, Moony, and gentlemen do not wail or gnash or..." He trails off, his eyes glazed over and distant.

In this instant, Remus decides that if Sirius vomits, no code, Marauder or otherwise, could possibly compel him to tidy it. The next second it doesn't matter, because Sirius is up and making for the portrait.

Suddenly, Remus understands all the head-thumping. He checks one last time to make sure James is settled, before trailing after Sirius, leaving James curled up around a table leg. He looks almost peaceful. He drools. On the way, Remus checks on Peter and notices his sock has ceased glowing, and can only assume this to be a good thing.

"Sirius," he calls quietly, rounding the corner in time to see the portrait swing shut with a muffled _ker-thunk!_ He is extremely annoyed with himself for this. It is Merlin knows how late and he is _chasing_ Sirius. Sirius, who he has spent the last two days avoiding. Sirius, with lipstick on the side of his shirt and all the subtlety of a ravenous troll. And Remus is chasing him. He cannot rationalize this, so he does not try, he simply charges onward, as one must in such situations.

As he climbs through the portrait, Remus gets an acute sense of apprehension. It is a strange and dangerous thing, a Drunk Sirius Black. While never as emotional as James or excitable as Peter, he has a habit of losing his already tenuous grasp on reality and the basic tenants of polite society. Sometimes at the same time.

Remus trips on an overturned plant in the darkened corridor. He stoops to set it to rights, then realizes the plant is both chortling and not actually supposed to be there, and decides against it. The plant is disconcerting, since it implies that, at some point this evening, someone drunk enough to make a plant become self-aware was _outside_ the Common Room. It does not bode well, but there is no time to think about it just now.

It takes him less than a minute to catch up to Sirius, who is, unsurprisingly, headed for the Astronomy Tower, a favorite haunt of lovers and drunks. Remus often wonders why Dumbledore doesn't seal it off better, or set Filch to stand guard at night. It's probably because it is patrolled mostly by Prefects who sympathize with student body's need for privacy and a mood-setting view. James and Sirius theorize that it's because Dumbledore understands how invaluable the tower is to the Hogwarts social environment, and is both "down" and "groovy" with that. Remus generally chooses these moments to re-evaluate his view of the Marauders' collective intelligence.

"Sirius," he hisses at the shadow ahead of him. Sirius makes no sign of acknowledgment, but Remus knows he heard. Sometimes he can just tell. They're on the steps of the tower before Remus manages to grab him, but then he catches only the red velvet flapping behind Sirius's legs. It slides to the floor and Remus gets his feet tangled in it. Sirius takes the stairs two at a time.

The air is bitterly cold when Remus emerges from the tower, but he feels his hands start to sweat and wipes them surreptitiously on his trousers. It's worry sweat, that's what it is, and oh hell, Sirius is looking all pensive and _broody_. No one broods like Sirius Black. It must be an aristocrat thing.

"Sirius, go inside. It's late, you need to go to sleep."

Sirius takes a step towards Remus and, Remus thinks with unconscious relief, away from the edge of the tower.

"It's too late to go to sleep. Or maybe it's too early, I'm not sure yet," he says cryptically, softly.

"What? Bed, Padfoot, come on, _please_, it's freezing," Remus says.

"_Please_? Christ, Moony, is that all you can ever say? _Do you know _any_ other words?_" Sirius says loudly.

"Padfoot, don't. Let's just, we'll just go to bed now and in the morning—"

Sirius snorts. It's loud and unflattering. "It _is_ morning, and I'm not going anywhere. I don't _want _to. Shove off, 'm fine." And he settles himself against the stone wall of the tower, leaning precariously, his eyes on Remus, defiantly.

It starts in his abdomen, a strange, hot sensation, then it seeps into his arms and legs and finally his face. It is _frustration_, thick and unmovable, and it is taking over his body and he can't contain it anymore, especially with Sirius sitting there _with lipstick on his collar_. _That_, Remus thinks coolly, as coolly as Remus Lupin has ever done anything in his life, _is exactly enough_.

"Sirius Black, there are a great many things about which I care at this particular moment, like not getting defenestrated by Filch _when_ he catches us, and whether I will ever regain use of my fingers after the inevitable frostbite, and whether or not I am going to be violently ill in the morning from whatever startlingly toxic concoction you and James managed to funnel through that ice-statue's—you know—" Remus blushes, then gets angry at himself for blushing and pushes on.

"But you know what I do not care about? I do not care what you want at this particular junction. I do not care _at all_. The degree to which I do not care is, in fact an intellectual feat for the ages. I have never cared so very little about anything in recent memory, actually, and that's keeping in mind _I had double potions Thursday_!"

Remus pauses a moment, takes a deep breath, and shivers. No one shouts at Sirius Black. McGonagall does, but she is made of marble and could explode Sirius's entire body with her eyes, so she hardly counts. Dumbledore could probably shout at Sirius, if he wanted to, being god-like and all, but one of the unfortunate side-effects of minor deity status is that it apparently robs one of the desire to exercise one's shouting privileges. James and Sirius shout at one another, but no one shouts at James either, with the notable exception of Lily Evans, who does so loudly and frequently and sometimes in multiple languages, but Remus attributes this to the fact that on some deep, disturbing level they are undeniably made for one another. But_ Remus Lupin_ certainly does not shout at Sirius Black. Remus Lupin does not shout at anyone. He just gets very calm and practical until whoever he is angry with gets frustrated and leaves.

Yet, here he is, _shouting_ at Sirius Black. It's unheard of. It's oddly satisfying.

"So what if I don't care _what_ you care about? You're not in charge. You always do that, always act like you're so grown-up, like you're the adult and we're a bunch of silly children, but you're just a sullen, precocious little kid. Can't you just _act_ like the rest of us, like you're not twelve-hundred years old, some of the time? Would it be so terrible?"

"I would, but you don't act seventeen, Sirius. And we can't _all_ behave like caffeinated eleven-year-olds!"

"Oh, right, because if the All Wise and Mature Moony Lupin isn't there being half as fun as a wet cardigan, _things_ might happen. Fun might be had! The horror, the scandal!"

"Oh shut up, Sirius, just shut up," Remus says harshly.

"No, no, I'm drunk, remember? I'm so drunk that you have to tell me what to do and tuck me in to bed like the eleven-year-old I am. I can't control what I'm saying!"

"You're twisting my words, you aren't—"

"Words? What words? You haven't spoken to me all night!"

"Oh, forgive me, Sirius, but it appears you found someone to keep you company."

"Wha—I am too pissed to see straight, quit being so damned cryptic!"

Remus throws his hands up in the air. He never understood the necessity for this gesture before now.

"Your collar! That's going to leave a stain if you don't clean it off soon. Unless it's like a badge of honor. Or something. I don't know."

Sirius looks down at his shirt and his eyebrows furrow. There is a pause, during which his face goes through several expressions, ranging from open-mouthed to scrunched-browed.

"You're an idiot, Remus. I mean, _really_, just a prize idiot tonight. And you're supposed to be the smart one!"

"I'ma—_You're_ a! What are you on about?"

"You stupid prat. I didn't even, she just, in my lap! And she kept whispering _things_, vile things—well, not _vile_ exactly, but vile coming from _her_—and she got her mouth all over me, but I didn't care because—because I was too busy worrying about you and whether you were ever going to emerge from your Moony Cave of Avoidance and explain what the hell is going on because I can't figure it out, because I'm an idiot, too!"

Sirius pauses a moment and his lips make little fishy talking motions like someone has cast Silencio on him while they weren't looking. Remus's muscles, his joints and his ligaments seize with anticipation and impatience, but he senses he shouldn't interrupt. It feels like they are standing on a precipice where the land behind them holds dissatisfaction and confusion, and the deep, black valley below them is full of unknown feelings and even more confusion.

"Y'see. You see, the thing is," he continues without meeting Remus's eye, "I was really _angry_ at you for, for not getting angry with me, before. When I asked you about the, you know, date thing. And it's stupid, I know, I know! Don't say it, I know you want to say it. But I wanted _you_ to be angry. Except you don't _get_ angry, because you're Moony, and I _like_ that you don't get angry. Except for when I hate it. I just—it's this: I'm sorry I'm an idiot, but you _made_ me an idiot with your rationality and your unreasonable reasonableness and your quiet voice and your silly, crooked lips and your, your," he makes a vague wavy gesture, "your hair that's always blurry and. And you. You just. _You_ make me an idiot." He pauses. "... I am unequivocally doomed, aren't I?"

He says this with his eyes cast down and his fingers wound in his hair a little psychotically. All of Remus's bones turn to jello for a moment and he wobbles to the left. It comes to him, in this moment, like a flash of lightning or a spell to the chest, how insane he has been. Or, perhaps, how insane his own complete, unshakable sanity has been. He never realized it until now, but perhaps things, like the things that exist between them, are not meant to be handled sanely, and that in fact, doing so is, in and of itself, a form of insanity. It makes Remus's head hurt. But it also makes Remus certain that definition or not, ambiguity be damned, Sirius and the way Sirius looks at him are infinitely more important than words. It's not that what they are is unspeakable, it's that it's so incredible that no one has invented a word for it yet.

He takes two deliberate steps towards Sirius, who is obnoxious and drunk and inconsiderate and a complete mystery to Remus most all of the time. He lunges forward.

For a moment, Remus isn't sure whether he is going to kiss him or punch him in the mouth, but Sirius's eyes grow wide as if he's seen a ghost, and Remus imagines this is because his own face is horribly contorted in a manner that only frightening affection mingled with murderous annoyance can produce.

He kisses Sirius, violently. It seems a fair compromise.

"You just—you're so, so stupid!" Sirius shouts when their lips separate momentarily.

"Me? I? You are the one with, with _girl_ all over your neck!"

They kiss again, hard mouths and sharp teeth. Sirius's fingers dig into Remus's skull; they pull his hair a little.

"Well, if you'd been with me, she wouldn't have had an _opportunity_ to—"

"If _I'd_ been? You're the one with the slattern and the—the _date_. And I didn't know, you know, what I was supposed to do but, but..."

Remus's conscious mind shrugs and gives up. His brain feels like it's made of water, all useless and runny, which it probably is — made of water, not runny — and were Remus capable of thinking, he would probably realize this, but he isn't, so he does not. Still, there is an incongruity between brain and body, between the hormonal explosion in his head and the tight, coiled energy in his stomach that throbs viciously with the silence of the past two days, and the kicked-in-the-gut sensation of seeing Sirius earlier, all tipsy and lipsticky. Remus's body shoves Sirius, back-first, against the freezing stone wall and pins him by the hips.

"Hey! This wall's made of rocks, if you didn't know. It's rather hard," Sirius whines.

"Shut up, shut up, or I'll push you again," Remus says, with a slight edge to his voice.

There is another long near-silence of kissing and the noises thereof, and after they have both rubbed off half the skin on their faces with stubbly ferocity, Sirius leans back and huffs thoughtfully. His breath is a delicate white cloud, floating and dissolving over their heads. Remus realizes he hasn't been able to feel his fingers for a while now, but he doesn't care.

"What did you want to do the other night? I mean, what did you want, deep down, under the eighty-three layers of Moony level-headedness?" Sirius says.

There is a reassuring glint of amusement in his eye, but Remus still feels that they are having one of those conversations that is superficial and unimportant unless you bugger it up, and then it's neither of those things. Remus frowns slightly, his hand still cupping the back of Sirius's neck. Their breath mingles.

"I wanted to hit her, very hard. And I wanted to hit you even harder. So -- so don't go finding anymore dates, alright? Next time I might not show such admirable self-restraint."

"Oh, but Moony, the dates, they find me. One of the lesser known hazards of being irresistible."

"Fine, then perhaps I'll go off and find myself someone to pass the time with while you're busy being _irresistible_."

"No. No, that's perfectly alright. I can just be irresistible with you. Exclusively. All the time."

"I think that sounds—I think that's as it should be," Remus says cautiously, and he hopes that he's said the right thing, because this is _important_ and not the time to be letting semantics and linguistic subtleties muck everything up.

But Sirius smiles and the corners of his eyes crinkle and Remus lets out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Sirius smells like whiskey, but his eyes are as clear as the winter sky.

"Good. I just, I needed to know, you know? Cause you're—really spectacular, sometimes. I mean, not as spectacular as _I_, of course, but you're not _bad_... Also, you are nearly as doomed as I am."

Remus smiles. "Shut up."

"Doomed! Doooooomed!" Sirius howls, like he's delivering an overzealous sermon.

Remus leans in and bites Sirius's lip, and it works because Sirius lets out a little "ahh," and goes quiet. After a moment, a loud, smacking sound emanates from the wet, sloppy intersection of their mouths. Remus ponders how repulsive this is, and feels, for the first time in days, months, his whole life perhaps, content.


	8. Things By Daylight

**I apologize in advance if this whole part is sloppy and sad, but I've done something to my back that it didn't like, so a lot of my normal editing time this week was devoted to lying on my back and moaning feebly. Also, this chapter is only half of what I'd planned to post tonight, so I'll try to finish up the rest and add it sometime during the week. Have a lovely Monday!**

* * *

There's spit all over Sirius's chin and, inexplicably, on the back of his neck, but he really doesn't feel like thinking about that just at the moment. He hadn't been _drunk_, really, but the loud, throbbing, angry man in his brain would like to add that he was also not sober. Plus, he feels like he might be naked except for his pants, only he can't be bothered to check, because that might involve movement.

And what had he _said_ exactly? Things. Certain things that he _might_ not have been so inclined to say were it not for the aggressive buzzing in his head and blood that made him certain that saying _absolutely_ anything was a good idea, so long as it ended in kissing. Kissing Remus. Because apparently, at some point, kissing Remus became priority one, outranking even sleep and the need to blow something up at least once per week.

So there had been kissing. Yes. Of that much he is certain. But at what point had kissing – outdoors? – turned in to being naked in his own bed?

_Sirius, come on, take off your shirt. Come on_. His memory is dark and blurred, a little out of focus even, but the words are clear as day. And the voice is Remus's. Oh gods, had they? No, of course not. Unless, Sirius realizes, they _did_ and he just doesn't remember. Except, that seems like the sort of thing he'd remember, whiskey not withstanding. Unless it isn't. He wouldn't know. _It _is not something he's actually, literally, in the real world and not his own imagination, done, so what if it _is_ incredibly forgettable? Ah, but Remus! Remus would never let him have his wicked way while he was having trouble standing up. Unless Remus was drunk too – but he hadn't been. Had he? Sirius suddenly can't remember. He closes his eyes again and tries not to think about it.

"That's how these things are decided, you know. In dark, smoke-filled rooms with exposed plumbing, where greasy men sit around and twirl their handlebar moustaches—" James's disembodied voice says. The voices had been there all along, but Sirius's brain was tuned to it's own frequency, rendering him oblivious.

"And toast with jewel-encrusted goblets full of babies blood," Peter's disembodied voice adds.

"When it's in season, yes," says James.

Sirius sits up. It is a mistake. He lays back down again, carefully arranging himself in a manner that appears to both welcome the eternal blackness and ward off early-morning Marauder attacks. Unfortunately for Sirius, it is not early-morning, so this does not work.

"Huzzah!" James yells as he pounces on Sirius's head. He then proceeds to shout "Prod! Prod, prod, prod!" as he stabs Sirius viciously in the side of the head with his index finger. James Potter is his best mate, his brother, and he'd die for him, except for at moments like this when he could kill the peppy bastard without a twinge of guilt, if only he could reach his wand. Or move his arms.

"How are — you were so, so drunk! And now you're crushing my pelvis with your knee and bounding around like a monkey!" Sirius moans feebly.

"Oh," James says, looking down at the precariously draped sheet around Sirius's waist. "Sorry, _Little Sirius_. No harm done. And for your information, I am, in fact, so hung-over I am contemplating gnawing off my own arm to distract myself from the nausea, except that raw arm might not sit well on my stomach—she is delicate, you see. But you are never the last to wake up, so it was my duty to attack! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and throw up, again," and James dashes for the toilet.

"Your stomach is female?" Peter asks as James flees.

When Sirius sits up again (slowly, with much grumbling), he notes that Peter is sprawled at uncomfortable looking angles, upside-down on his bed. He is a sad shade of puce. Remus is sitting on his own bed with the neatly stacked pillows and the hospital corners, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and a large, imposing book in his hand. He is dressed, too, which might not seem like an accomplishment, considering James and Peter are also fully dressed, but Remus gives off the distinct impression of having actually _gotten dressed_, rather than having simply woken up with his shoes on. Sirius has a brief, flickering memory of getting his fingers caught in his own shoelaces.

_Here, let me do it. Just lay down_, Remus-of-last-night had said.

Sirius shakes off the haze of recollection. "You all are a sorry lot," he says crankily.

"I'm ill, Padfoot! It's unkind to mock the deathly ill!" Peter moans, writhing like a fish on his bed for dramatic effect.

"You aren't _ill_, you're hung over. And it's alright to mock the ill when the ill have brought it upon themselves," says Sirius matter-of-factly.

"But I'm not just hung over! I think I have the flu. Or scurvy!" Peter protests.

"Well, sailor, I hear not drinking a pint of whiskey all by your lonesome is an excellent cure for scurvy. Or you could eat that mango you had—where'd it get to?" Sirius trails off, looking about for the misplaced fruit.

"It's in here!" James shouts from the next room. "And it's not so much a mango anymore!" He adds.

For one surreal moment, Sirius thinks he hears animal noises emanating from the washroom where James's head is presumably in-toilet. And then a very small flamingo prances into the center of the dormitory and calmly stands on one leg.

"Jaaaames..." Peter says with tremendous apprehension. "Is that?"

"It is," Sirius says without looking, answering Peter's unfinished question.

"That was _my_ mango!" Peter shouts, crossing his arms and scowling.

"That was a mango? Oh god, Sirius, why is it now a flamingo? Why? Flamingos are something mangos _should not be_! Merlin's pants, the poor creature still smells of fruit," Remus says, finally putting down his Giant Book of Un-fun Things and putting his hand over his eyes.

_Give me your hand, you're going to fall over and die. Your trousers are caught on your legs._ Sirius shakes himself again.

"Why 'Sirius'? Why is it always your first assumption that Sirius was behind it, hmm?" James says as he hobbles out of the washroom and back to his bed, looking equal parts offended and decrepit.

"It was not a compliment!" Remus clarifies.

"Excuse me, is anyone going to do anything about my mango? It's—it's pecking at me!" Peter interjects.

"Sorry mate, it would be unethical to change it back," James says, wadding his blankets into a pillow-shaped configuration before collapsing on them.

"You could eat it anyway," Sirius offers helpfully.

Peter pulls a face that would seem to imply that he was more in the mood for exotic fruit than exotic wildlife.

Sirius notices his trousers, folded neatly at the end of his bed, and tries to put them on without getting out from under his blanket. It involves a good deal of awkward flailing and at one point he nearly falls off the bed.

_I am folding your trousers because it makes them happy. And I'll have you know, folding is a lot difficult with your mouth just there... No, I am not going to _fold _your pants as well_... Sirius blinks, willing himself to remember what came next. His memory hums quietly to itself and refuses to be helpful.

Sirius finds his shirt folded neatly beneath his trousers, with sharp folds and the smell of cleaning charms. He is momentarily overwhelmed by an unbidden surge of affection for clothes-folding werewolves. He looks back at Remus, who is reading again, oblivious to them all. He wonders what it's like in Remus's head – no doubt filled to the brim with mysterious creatures and strange, dramatic characters. It's probably interesting. It probably smells like old paper.

"Alright, I think food now. I think water and, possibly, toast — if I'm feeling dangerous by the time we get to the Great Hall. And if I haven't thrown up in a suit of armor or something," James says.

"_Please_, don't. Do you remember how angry McGogglies got last time you did that?" Peter says, and grimaces.

"Yes, _I remember_. How could I not? She threatened to eviscerate me and I had to look up what that meant," James says with a visible shutter.

"Well, 'scuse me, but occasionally people drunk enough to vomit in suits of armor are also people who are drunk enough not to remember it. I could draw a Vin Diagram for you, if you'd like," Peter says, looking quite pleased with himself for being cleverer than James, even though, in all fairness, James is in danger of falling into the pit of death while Peter is merely in danger of falling off his own bed.

James ignores him and swings his feet onto the floor. He stands, and looks triumphant for a moment, as though the floor were the crest of Mount Kilimanjaro. Sirius sees none of this, because he is busy staring at Remus (or the cover of Remus's book, anyway) and chanting _Look at me look at me look aaaaat meeeee_ in his head, hoping that perhaps he'll perform wandless magic and banish Remus's book to the heart of a great, damp, book-ruining swamp.

Miraculously, Remus lets his book slip just a little, and glances at Sirius over the top of it. Sirius sticks out his tongue. He can't see Remus's mouth, but he can tell Remus is smiling by the little wrinkles around his eyes. Sirius wonders if it's _his_ turn to vomit, and whether his stomach is always going to react so alarmingly and wonderfully to Remus's smile-wrinkles, even when they're eighty and the wrinkles are covered with other wrinkles and they are both as sexy as dried leather. Except that he can't imagine Remus _not_ being sexy, because even though he likes Remus's hair and hands and smile, they're not why he _likes Remus_. He likes Remus because he is quietly brilliant, and brilliantly wicked, and because he makes Sirius feel like he has a stake in himself, beyond succeeding exactly enough to keep from being expelled. He never had anyone to succeed _for _before, what with parents who's definition of success varies wildly from Sirius's own, and no one else with the time or energy (because Sirius is aware he requires a good deal of energy) to care. And it scares Sirius a little, the idea of Remus being so important, but the thought of Remus _not_ being so important scares him a hell of a lot more.

Sirius winks at him.

"Are either of you coming, or are you just going to sit there and read and – and Padfoot, what _are_ you doing exactly?" James asks, looking perplexed, though, thankfully, not alarmed.

"Trying to get into Moony's pants," Sirius says lewdly.

Remus makes a sound as if he is laughing and choking on his own tongue, simultaneously.

"Oh, don't laugh, Moony, you'll just make him think he's funny," James says.

"I am funny!"

"Funny in the head," Peter mutters, albeit audibly.

Remus puts his book on the table with a loud _thump_ and says, "Well, I'm coming. I fear my innocence would be in jeopardy were I to remain here unchaperoned with this hoodlum." Sirius suspects that he is the only one who catches the glint in Remus's eye when he says this, and his stomach gives a pleasant lurch. "Besides, Sunday breakfast is my favorite. They always have sausages."

"Oooh, you know the way to my heart, Moony. I cannot resist a sausage," Sirius says, waggling his eyebrows in a manner that he hopes suggests seduction, but instead makes him look like he is having a mild stroke.

Remus grimaces, but there is a smile behind it, so Sirius doesn't care.

On the way to the Great Hall, James and Peter take the lead, with James listing a variety of flamingo-centric recipes, each more deeply upsetting than the last. Around the time he mentions strawberry filling, Sirius tangles his hand briefly in the soft hair at the nape of Remus's neck. When Remus glances at him, Sirius gulps and mutters quietly, _We didn't, you know? Did we?_ He makes a vague gesture between them and hopes that Remus, clever Remus, understands what he is saying. He usually does.

Remus looks faintly surprised and, to Sirius's disappointment, a little offended. "No, no of course not."

"Right. Of course not," Sirius says, and smiles, a little half-heartedly. He doesn't want it to have happened, exactly. Well, of course he _wants_ it to have happened (in fact, he seems to spend large chunks of time, mostly during lessons, imagining the many, varied, and perverse ways in which it might happen), but he also wants to remember it the next day, assuming it doesn't all end in tears and vows of celibacy. But if he's being quite honest, a small part of him is ready for it to just bloody happen already. Whenever, wherever, however. And _all_ of him wants Remus to share his enthusiasm. Unfortunately, it appears that of all the boys in the world he could have seduced in a bathroom stall, Remus is the probably the only one lacking a crucial thing called raging, uncontrollable hormones.

For a moment, Sirius contemplates whether he would still act like an insane person over Remus if Remus consisted solely of crooked smiles and folded trousers, without the potential for _other_ _things_. While he's debating, Remus runs his fingers along the inside of Sirius's wrist as they walk, so that it might look like an accident to anyone watching. Sirius's stomach gives a pleasant (and yet very unpleasant, how can that be?) lurch. Yes. Yes, he would still be insane, in any case.


	9. Drunken Things Revisited

"Pass the toast, Prongs. Prongs? James!" Peter shouts across the table.

James visibly shakes himself, and passes the toast. He then groans quietly and places his forehead gingerly on the table. "The kippers are staring at me. Make them stop. It's rude."

There's a long pause during which Sirius tries not to stare at Remus, who is chewing provocatively. Eating is not, traditionally, a particularly arousing activity, unless you are naked and the food is being consumed off of someone who is equally naked, but Remus licks his lips between bites, and you can see the muscles in his jaw working, and it's all Sirius can do not to leap across the table and do something inappropriate involving jam and Remus's neck.

Suddenly, there is a soft pressure on the inside of Sirius's ankle, and he chokes. "Ahhaahhkkk," he cries, trying to keep particles of egg from flying out of his mouth.

Remus stares at his own plate with great intensity, but his eyebrows twitch upwards. The pressure disappears momentarily, and then there it is again, _on the other ankle_, moving in little circle-motions. Sirius does a better job of not inhaling his eggs this time, but he's sure that were anyone else at the table awake, his face would be a dead giveaway. Remus slices off another piece of sausage and puts it in his mouth. When he licks his lips, Sirius is sure that it is malicious.

Were Sirius the sort to surrender, he would give up right now and ritualistically sacrifice himself, right there on the table, in honor of the great and terrible force that is Remus Lupin's Sneakiness. But surrender is not in his vocabulary. Slowly, taking care to keep chewing and not let his eyeballs fall out, he shifts forward on the bench so that their knees are pressed together. Then he waits.

It takes a full minute, but eventually Remus disengages himself from his toast and meets Sirius's eye. With all the prowess he can muster, Sirius cocks his head to one side and slides his palm from his own knee onto Remus's, his fingers moving lightly against the inside of Remus's thigh.

A few things happen simultaneously. One, Remus's eyes double in size. Two, his neck goes splotchy and red. Three, an innocent sausage link is catapulted into Alice Prewitt's orange juice, several seats away.

"Something wrong with your breakfast, Moony?" Sirius says, trying to sound casual. It's wonderful, this. That Remus, who puts up with so little from so few, will let himself be groped in the middle of the Great Hall, and that it _never stops being wonderful_, it just ages like a fine wine.

Remus clears his throat. He straightens his collar. "No. Nothing's wrong. It's. It's irresistible," he says without blinking.

Sirius feels his smile slice his whole face in half, ear to ear, and wonders if he looks as stupid as he feels.

"Oh," James says suddenly, dropping his fork. He looks like he has seen not just a ghost – which he has, of course, because Nick is hovering over the table like a mother hen – but a ghost he was not expecting to see.

Sirius had forgotten until just this moment that they are still in the Great Hall, surrounded by _people_, some of whom _might_ be alarmed to see the pair of them having a feel over breakfast (or under it, as the case may be.) His heart leaps into his mouth and he removes his hand from Remus's leg so quickly that his knuckles smack into the bottom of the table painfully.

"What, mate?" Sirius says, looking as innocent as can be expected with images of jam-clad werewolves flashing unbidden in one's brain.

"Oh!" James squeals again, falling over himself to get up. Before anyone can ask, he legs it for the exit without looking back.

Peter looks confused but stands up as well. When Sirius looks back, Remus is staring at him questioningly. He shrugs and they both get up, trying not to draw attention to themselves as they chase James out the door.

--

Hogwarts castle is vastly and annoyingly big. It has an untold number of floors, and endless, twisty passages and stairways, and a floor plan thought up by lunatic ancient witches and wizards who were too busy founding this and decreeing that to bother putting in the occasional shortcut to the Common Room that doesn't include being coated in castle-snot or attacked by a gargoyle. Because of this, the Map was a necessary and brilliant invention, for which Sirius claims at least eighty percent of the credit.

But as it turns out they don't have to go all the way to the Common Room. They barely make it out of the Great Hall, in fact.

"Oh... Oh my," Remus mutters, staring dumbly.

"Yeah," Sirius says quietly.

The entire wall glitters at them, mockingly.

"You... we did this, didn't we?" Remus asks, including himself, without thinking, in the guilty party. He does so out of loyalty or comradery or perhaps just insanity, even though he knows that he has never in his life consumed enough alcohol to forget participating in something as horrifically stunning as this. His eyes move swiftly from the anatomically correct, dancing cherubs, to the large, sparkling inscription.

"Oh, _yes_," James says, sounding inordinately pleased with himself.

The letters are at least two-Marauders high, and Remus is almost impressed by the way the script swirls and loops in on itself. Somehow, the effect is hardly lessened by the missing "t."

"But why would we paint... Oh," Sirius says, in sudden awestruck wonderment.

"So they'll never suspect," James whispers reverently.

The shades of green mingle and contrast nicely, and the overall effect is, in all likelihood, visible from space, or at the very least, Kent.

"I knew it wasn't a dream!" Sirius says.

"Bloody _hell_," Peter adds.

"It's like a Mural of Mischief!" James cries triumphantly.

"Right, until McGonagall sees it and paints over it, w_ith our blood!_" Peter says, with a seizure-like arm gesture, and starts pacing the pace of a man with a terrifying mother.

"She won't know it's _us_, you ponce. Why would a load of Gryffindors paint 'SLYTHERIN'—"

"'SLYHERIN,' actually," Remus corrects.

James looks annoyed. "Whatever! Why would we paint anything big and green and covered in snakes?"

"Fair point," Remus says. Sirius catches his eye, only for a moment, and Remus feels like he's inhaled nitrous oxide.

"Hang on... hang on... shhh!" Peter whispers, looking distracted.

"What is it, mate?"

"Shhh! I'm wafting!"

"You're what now?" James looks concerned.

"You don't—can't you smell it?" Peter says.

Remus inhales deeply but can't make out anything past the overwhelming smell of Sirius's hair, a few feet away. Canine senses are no use whatsoever when they are controlled by human silliness.

James gets a look of deep set concentration, his eyebrows nearly joining together to form a singular lightening rod for revelations and moments of "oh!"

"Is that?" James says uncertainly.

"It is," Sirius says, and grins.

Suddenly, Remus can smell it too. Wolf or no wolf, it's impossible to ignore. It smells of mango, but also vaguely like vomit and chemical burn. It is not pleasant. It is _not_ subtle.

"_How did we make it bloody do that?_" Peter screeches desperately.

Remus presses his palm into his eye-socket and focuses on the dull, thrumming pain. He was not meant for this. He was meant for a life of quiet, bookish dignity, with occasional bouts of modest genius and studious innovation. He enjoys cataloguing, for god's sake, and licking envelopes. Tedious, mundane things. How he was swept into this world of inexplicable smells and baroque vandalism, he cannot surmise. Actually, that is a lie. He knows why, and the why knows that Remus is helpless to resist its—_his_ charm. Or charming _lack_ of charm, as is often the case.

James and Sirius, on the other hand, flush with expressions of pure, wicked glee, tinged with the inner-glow of self-satisfaction. It is clear in this moment why they are best mates. It is clear to Remus why he never understands them, because, for Remus, the smell of mango-vomit-on-fire does not inspire the celebratory dance James and Sirius are now performing, in unison, where anyone can see, and perhaps this is Remus's great flaw. He does not dance. When he celebrates, there are no jigs or cries of joy or ritual sacrifices. His celebrations are always too quiet and very _clean_.

_God_, Remus thinks, _there it is. I am a stick in the mud. I am a wet blanket. I am a soggy, limp blanket wrapped around a stick, covered in mud, molded to look like a teenager. I am _so_ very hopeless_. And it is then that Sirius claps him soundly on the back and ruffles his hair affectionately. A little _too_ affectionately, under normal circumstances. Remus find himself wondering how Sirius can be so willing to tolerate someone like him, someone so distinctly lacking in all the facets of fun at which the rest of them effortlessly excel. Yet, somehow, illogically, the fact that Sirius _does_ tolerate him makes Remus feel ever so much more tolerable. Then again, perhaps it is not illogical. Perhaps this is what it's _always_ like when two people inexplicably decide to tolerate one another.

He tries to smile but suspects that it comes across a bit too wibbly.

"I suppose, in some very roundabout way, this explains what happened to my mango," Peter says.

"Well, not _really_. At least, I don't recall anything about stealing a thing's smell... essence? And then turning it in to a bird. Of course I don't always pay attention," James says, looking a little baffled by his own accomplishment. "Actually... I don't remember _how_ we did this."

Peter and Sirius return James's look of baffled pride and shrug, almost in unison.

Remus throws his hands in the air. "Think of the indignities that poor mango – ehr, flamingo must have suffered."

James gives a labored sigh. "Dear god, man, you are missing the point! We have created the most spectacular, the most glorious prank ever to grace these hallowed halls. We will be _legend_ – as though we weren't already. Our descendants will pause in reverence when they speak our names; they will say 'James Potter and his friends? Were they not the creators of the Marauder's Map, and artists responsible for the Slytherin Mural of '77? Oh, how their greatness inspires us all.'"

"Or they will say 'James Potter? Isn't he the man that is still scrubbing that wall clean, lo these twenty years later?'," McGonagall says, appearing out of absolutely no where, as she is wont to do.

"Aaghhkk!" James shrieks, somewhat girlishly.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Peter chants. He is unable to look McGonagall in the eye. More so than usual.

Sirius looks like he's just swallowed something very large and pointy and unpleasant. Remus sighs.

"Hmm. The cherubs legs are a bit short, but overall, I must say, your sense of proportion is improving. I only hope you weren't too generous with glittering spells. Those can be _murder_ to remove," McGonagall says, her voice dipping low on the word "murder." James shudders.

"But dearest Minerva, this is but our House Spirit, in wall form. We cannot help that you inspire in us this deep and... Uncontrollable Gryffindor pride that can only be expressed visually," Sirius attempts. You have to give him credit -- he does sell it. With charm befitting his surname, he makes it sound almost wholesome.

"Then why, Mr. Black, does it say 'Slyherin'? A simple 'Go, go Gryffindor' would have sufficed, I assure you."

Peter looks like he might vomit. Remus pats him on the back in what he hopes is a friendly, reassuring manner, but it only makes Peter jump about three feet in the air. Sirius doesn't crack; he doesn't even flinch when McGonagall gives him her most terrifying loom-and-stare. If it were Remus standing there in the face of McGonagall's frightening amusement, he is sure he would have broken down five minutes ago and confessed to everything from creating the mural to a variety of war crimes. Sirius almost looks like he's _enjoying_ it. It's remarkable, Remus thinks fondly. He's remarkable. Remus bites his lip.

"Ah, but where is the inspiration? The artistic expression? _Professor_," Sirius purrs, making Smoldering Eyes at her, "I dare say you know better than I that any hooligan, any ne'er-do-well could have created something as pedestrian as 'Go, go Gryffindor' in garish lettering. But we chose to strive for something better, a _higher_ form of tribute, if you will."

"Oh yes, very high. Nearly a full story off the ground. I shudder to think how you got it up there, but I suppose I shall learn your secrets while supervising this—" she makes a little noise between a cough and a laugh. Somehow, it is scary. "_Artistic expression's_ swift and immediate removal."

"We—we just have to take it down?" James ventures hopefully.

"Oh yes. _Without_ wands, if you please, Mister Potter."

James entire body shrinks about an inch. It would be funny—it _is_ funny—but Remus is in no mood to appreciate the humor. He finds it is difficult to feel jovial when faced with the prospect of spending the prime of his life chained to a sponge.

"But—but what if we _can't_? I mean, some things _have_ to be spelled away. You can't scrub the unscrubbable!" Peter protests, a deep panic swelling in his voice. James shoots him a look that says, quite articulately, _I will scrub your head off if you make this worse for us_.

"Quite so, Mister Pettigrew. In the event that you cannot successfully remove your artwork, I'm sure Mister Filch and I will be able to invent an appropriate alternative," McGonagall says reassuringly.

Peter does not look reassured. He looks ill.

"Now, I will expect the four of you back here this evening immediately following dinner. I will provide the cleaning materials and supervision, you will provide the muscle. Or you will attempt to, at any rate," she adds skeptically.

James and Peter look oddly resolved, as though the execution is set for dawn, but they have both lived full and happy lives. Sirius, being Sirius, still looks mischievous. The pall of guilt and being caught red-handed has failed to extinguish the glow of triumph in his eyes. He's insulated like that. What happens around him, the events upon which the rest of the world bases its existence, are like a performance to him, and he is, of course, the handsome leading man. Remus is probably a chorus girl, or a page or something. He's the sort of character that has one line, something like _Yes sir, and shall I fetch your coat?_ and then vanishes into the scenery. Hell, he might as well _be_ the scenery. But in a way that is unjust to the rest of the world, being the lamp that Sirius switches on at the beginning of the second act is, somehow, a thoroughly fulfilling experience. It's to do with the intensity of his stares and the way he talks to you, as though you are privy to something beautiful and secret that he will only ever tell you. It's not _fair_, but it's a fact, and Remus Lupin has been a lamp since First Year. He's only recently been switched on.

McGonagall storms away, billowing black robes and a spine like a poker. Remus breathes a sigh of relief. It has become his fondest wish of late to finish school without being transfigured into a chamber pot by McGonagall or having his bollocks removed by Filch. He wishes this for all the Marauders, in fact (particularly Sirius, particularly regarding Filch.) As June grows nearer though, instead of taking comfort in the fact that this is the downhill-coast to their seven years of uphill education, he grows more and more wary of each new prank, each fresh, mad sparkle in James and Sirius's eyes. With the clock running out, they are escalating their endeavors, bound and determined to go out with a bang (which, Remus is certain, will be the sound their collective heads make when they hit the stone floor.)

James and Peter scamper back into the Great Hall, hoping to catch the last of breakfast or the first of lunch, whatever's unlikely to poison them and not nailed to the floor. Remus heads for the staircase, hoping to eek out a few minutes of blessed silence in the dormitory before it is once again filled with the sounds of Marauderly enthusiasm. He's just made it to the second floor when Sirius, appearing out of nowhere (as he is wont to do), grabs two belt loops on the back of Remus's trousers and yanks him from his path, rather unceremoniously.

"Oh my god! I think my heart just stopped. Padfoot, what in the hell are you doing?" Remus cries, struggling to stay upright and walk backwards as Sirius drags him down the hallway.

Sirius stops. He looks incredibly smug, which makes Remus incredibly nervous. Without a word, he has Remus pinned to the wall, which promptly swings around, and it is then that Remus realises where they are, and how very dusty this particular hidden passage is.

Remus sneezes.

"Bless you," Sirius breathes against his mouth.

Remus's brain is accustomed to handling a variety of unexpected stimuli without much of a struggle. Peter is hanging from a chandelier by his underpants, which happen to be on his head? Not a problem. James and Sirius are covered in war paint despite having Charms in ten minutes? Must be a Tuesday. But for some bizarre reason, every time Sirius puts his warm, slightly slobbery mouth anywhere near Remus's face, his brain cannot bloody deal with it. It shuts down. It turns off. It lights up and does back-flips.

"Now, wait just a moment," Remus says, craning his neck awkwardly to escape Sirius's mouth.

"Yes?" Sirius says, looking amused.

"I—" Remus hesitates. Sirius doesn't.

Sirius's teeth are very sharp, and he tends to use them an awful lot, more than necessary, and this should, Remus thinks, be annoying. Irritating. Unbearable. Just imagine! Being bitten and nibbled at all over the place, weird little red spots on his neck and shoulders, raw lips that bleed on occasion. It's barbaric. And yet, Remus admits, he probably does nothing to discourage such behavior by sighing and melting and biting back.

Sirius's knee slides between Remus's legs. It feels _very_ nice. Remus lets out a little groan that he didn't intend to let out, and his hips – his traitorous, traitorous hips – rock forward. They could not, literally, physically, be touching each other any more than they already are. Sirius's chest is long and lean, and it presses against Remus's, rising and falling in time with their stifled, gaspy breathing.

It goes on for a while, this aggressive loveliness, until there comes a point at which it is obvious that _something_ has to happen. Either Filch will stumble upon them, or one of them will pass out from lack of oxygen, or they will... "resolve" things themselves. Remus isn't sure that a dusty passage that smells of old stones and dirt is an appropriate place to be doing any resolving.

Sirius's hands slide beneath Remus's shirt, before slipping down, slowly, subtly, and coming to rest against the front of Remus's trousers. It is then that Remus realises that certain things are about to resolve _themselves_ unless one of them has the decency to pass out.

"My book!" Remus says. As soon as the words leave his mouth he wishes he could recall them and instead say something slightly more logical, like _My dignity!_ or _My trousers!_

Sirius pauses, his hand still in place, his teeth still dug into Remus's neck.

"I'm nearly finished with it, and once James and Peter have eaten, I won't get a moment's peace, and I'll forget what I've already read, and I'll just have to read the damn thing over. It'll be a perpetual cycle of – of literacy!" He hopes that if he keeps talking, eventually he'll say something that makes a modicum of sense.

Wondering, puppy-dog eyes stare at him, and Remus feels very silly.

"Moony. This is not about books."

"It is!"

"It is _not_. We've done this! Loads of times! It's just us, you know. Why are you being all... dodgy?"

"Well, this _is_ a bit dodgy! We're in a passage in the middle of the day."

"Ahem. Bathroom stall?" Sirius says, looking skeptical.

"Oh, shut up. I was young and naive, and I'd recently spent two months wondering if I was out of my bloody mind to think that you were biting your lip _at me_ when no one else was looking."

"Oh, it was more than two months, peaches."

"Peaches? I'm going to throw up on your shoes."

"No... You're going to get off."

"It doesn't bother you that—"

"No, it doesn't! It's a passageway, so what? Does it matter? You are _weird_, Moony, really. Are you sure you're even male?"

Remus snorts and glances down. "I think you of all people should be able to answer that."

"That's not what I meant. Did you know we've been having a go of it for four months now?"

"I am _aware_. What is your—"

"When—At what point are you going to, I don't know, unwind?"

"Sirius, I think I sufficiently unwound that first time, in the dormitory, with the—you know."

"Yes, I know. And that's all great—really! I'm happy, I am, it's just. You're always so... Appropriate."

"Sirius, does this have anything to do with the fact that we don't, that we haven't..."

"No! And yes. No and yes. It's not _the fact_ that we haven't done it. It's _the way_ that we haven't done it. And this morning, when I woke up, I was all naked and sore—"

"You fell down three times last night trying to take off your trousers."

"Yes, alright, but I didn't remember that at first, you see? And I just thought that maybe..."

"_Really_, Padfoot? Did you really think—"

"Of course I didn't _really_ think that— But, you know, it was nice to consider? But you don't even _consider_ it, do you?"

"I consider!"

"You consider?"

"I consider. But when _I_ consider it, you are never drunk. Well, not that drunk, at any rate."

"Well, what am I, then? When you consider it?"

Remus breathes a long sigh. He feels his ears turning pink.

"You are, well, naked, of course."

"Naturally."

"And the only one in the room. And James and Peter and whoever the hell else aren't about to come charging in at any damn moment. And I haven't had to clean up anyone's vomit recently, but then we're discussing you, aren't we?"

"Rather."

"Well, you're. I don't know. I'm sorry to disappoint, but I don't have any elaborate, girly fantasies worked out, exactly, with candles and draperies and sonnets and that type of thing. But I _do_ think about it, Sirius, honestly. An increasingly absurd amount of the time, actually."

Sirius pauses a moment and looks away. "Well, then I'll just have to work on being naked and sober and alone more frequently."

Remus's stomach does a twisty little dance.

Sirius clears his throat, loudly, and straightens up. "But for now, I shall begrudgingly return you, untouched, to your world of fictitious persons and old book smell."

"Well, I'm not sure if the 'untouched' part is completely necessary..."

Sirius's face light up. "Really?" He says, edging closer, smiling like a razor's edge. He's breathing directly into Remus's ear canal, and his hand, which he'd previously removed, edges back down Remus's stomach.

Remus doesn't answer. Instead he leans in and presses their lips together, and does not think about books or silent dormitories for another thirteen minutes.


	10. Ineffable Things

**Notes: The structure of this chapter is a little different, but I hope nobody hates it too passionately. Anyway, I really like the way this part turned out, so I hope you all do, as well.**

Remus is... twitchy. It's in his fingers – they ruffle the pages of his books and tug at the loose thread on the sleeve of his cardigan. It's in his eyes, darting around the room at every little sound, every architectural creak and groan. Mostly though, it's in his mouth. He chews on his bottom lip. He chews on his top lip. He chews on the inside-corner where his lips meet until it's raw and coppery.

Sirius has been gone – _gone!_ As in not around, as in physically – for four days and three hours. He's staying at his uncle's flat, which he'll move into in June. He's supposed to be "doing a bit of spring cleaning," which is a phrase for "getting smashed and walking around starkers" with which Remus was previously unfamiliar. Dumbledore is letting him miss lessons because he supposed to talk with an Auror who is stationed nearby, Moody something or other, about The Future. Remus wonders if Sirius will show up for their meeting.

At first, it was lovely being alone. Remus had curled up on his bed with the oldest, dustiest book the library had to offer. It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, Remus thinks, though he can't quite remember. Everyone else was in the Common Room, crowded around the fire, elbows rubbing, hands "accidentally" brushing, and typical adolescent insanity. Remus couldn't help but feel a tad superior when, minutes after Sirius left, he successfully channeled all his energies into reading, and not counting the hours until Sirius returned, or anything so cliché. It was nice.

Seventeen minutes later he'd let out a heaving sigh and stopped pretending to read.

Four days and three hours later, Remus is still on page thirty-two. It's so _unfair_. He loves old books, and this one is a real treasure. It has a cracked, leathery cover that was probably blue once, but is currently waffling somewhere between gray and green. The spine is soft and worn, and the pages are supple, like skin, only not as disturbing as this might imply. Reading a book that has been read by other people is a very intimate experience. Remus thinks about all the licked-fingers that have turned the pages before his, and about all the eyes that have stared intently at the same words he is staring at, and feels connected to readers past. It's terribly personal, and something he enjoys indulging in privately, thank you very much – which is why it's unforgivable, in his mind, to waste such valuable reading time being besotted.

And he _is_ besotted, in the most squishy, runny, embarrassing way imaginable. There's really no avoiding it at this point. He figures he's about a day shy of digging out the photograph he took of Sirius last month (even though photograph-Sirius alternates between blowing kisses and making lewd gestures at the camera), and about two days shy of some pretty flagrant abuses of the Polyjuice potion. It's exceedingly fortunate that Sirius is supposed to return later this evening.

Remus returns to his book. Was the tree on the hill? And whose sword was it, exactly? It's all a blur, and the characters keep pausing mid-sentence and asking if he's paying attention.

"Bugger," he mutters, and tosses the book to the foot of the bed. Moments later he feels guilty, picks it back up, makes sure all the pages are straight and tucks it under his pillow. He stands. He's not sure why, but he feels like if he sits still another moment he'll slowly dissolve into a puddle of hormones and boredom. The floor is too littered to pace, so Remus settles for kicking around bits of clothing and trash that have accumulated nearby. It's not terribly satisfying. He glances at Sirius's bed. Sirius's bed glances back.

It's been lurking, these past days, and niggling at Remus's subconscious. It's _just_ a bed, like Remus's bed is just a bed. Except that it is Sirius's bed. Remus pointedly looks in the other direction. He will not do that, it's too, too emasculating, even for Remus, even for such desperate times. His traitorous eyes dart back to it, against his will, and it looks, if possible, _softer_ than it had moments before.

Sirius's bed is usually hostile territory, full of unsavory things, so why does Remus want to lie on it? It's ridiculous. Remus walks over to the edge of it and throws a paranoid glance around the obviously empty dormitory. He just wants to test something… With a sound like the air evacuating his lungs, Remus collapses prostrate on the bed and squeezes his eyes closed against the humiliation. Being on Sirius's bed is pleasant, though not as pleasant as, let's say, being on Sirius's bed _with Sirius_, but it's still better than sitting all twitchily on his own mattress. And it smells...

Oh no. No, no, no. There are some lines Remus is determined not to cross, and consciously smelling Sirius's pillow is one of them. The temptation is not the same as it is for, say, James to smell Lily's hair (which he does, often in public to the horror of all, including Lily) because there's an underlying canine draw. Sirius smells like security, like pack. It's the most natural thing in the world for the Remus-the-wolf to be drawn to it, but it makes Remus-the-boy feel like a bit of a loony.

He rationalises it like this: He always smells Sirius in this room. His certain smell, like earth and musk and salt, clings to the curtains, seeps into the woodwork. It's the same for all of them, and Remus can smell James (moss and soap) and Peter (lemon and dust) too, in their respective spaces. But Sirius is everywhere. So really, when you get right down to it, it's not a question of whether or not Remus is _going_ _to_ smell him, it's a matter of _where_. And by lying on Sirius's bed, it's more passive, less a conscious effort, which makes it better, somehow. It makes no sense, but then so few things in relation to Sirius do as of late.

Without exactly meaning to (but without any effort to stop himself) Remus breathes in deeply and wonders what in the hell "late Friday" means in Sirius-speak, and whether or not he will be back soon enough to prevent Remus from actually crawling beneath the sheets and being eaten by whatever terrifying creature lurks below.

"Good lord, man. Pull yourself together."

"Gaaahgg!"

"Ha ha. Missed me?" Sirius says stretching out beside Remus, whose cheeks burn so fiercely that his whole head is in danger of catching fire. Sirius is coatless and red with cold, his eyes bright and his feet bare. He must have been standing there long enough to take off his shoes and oh god, Remus wants to be eaten by the Bed Monster.

"Oh my god! Oh sweet – I just – Oh my _god_!"

"Re_lax_," Sirius drawls, sounding more nefarious than two syllables should allow. "I expected worse. Really! No shrine in my image? Not even a modest one?"

"Shut up," says Remus, rolling away.

"Where are you going?" Sirius asks innocently, catching Remus by the shirttails and rolling him back.

"In search of my dignity, if you will kindly release my shirt, please and thank you."

"You are not! C'mere," Sirius says throatily, slinging his leg across Remus's legs, hitching him closer. "So. Why are you on my bed? Not that I mind, of course. Just curious. For posterity's sake."

"Posterity? I hate to be the one to tell you this, but what we've been up to lately rather negates the possibility of offspring."

"Oh, pish posh. My stunningly gorgeous, busty, blonde wife shall bear many children. Most of them mine. Sir Sirius the Fertile, they shall call me, and sterile peasants will make sacrifices to my loins."

"Ugh, do you really believe anyone will want children badly enough to go near your loins?"

"You tell me. You don't even _want_ children and I practically have to beat you away with a broomstick."

Remus hits him with a pillow.

Sirius laughs like a child. "Oh, well, when you put it so _articulately_, I can see your point. But you never answered my question: My bed, you are on it. Why?"

"It was lonely."

"It was, was it?"

"I just said that it was."

"It missed me?"

"I suppose it rather did."

"Uhuh. Well, I missed it, too. Even though it smells like a library died all over it."

"What do you have against libraries?"

"Nothing! Only I don't particularly want to shag the Muggle History section."

"Please tell me we are no longer discussing your bed."

"Were we ever really discussing my bed?"

"I suppose not."

Their faces are close together, and Remus has gone cross-eyed trying to look at Sirius. When his eyeballs start to ache, he rolls onto his back and Sirius automatically fits his mouth into the crook of Remus's neck, absently licking and biting at his throat. A year ago, this would have been disgusting, unthinkable, more than a little shocking. Three months ago, it would have been pleasant, unsettling, and still a little shocking. Now, it merely results in increased twitching.

"So, how was... Umm, the. Thing. Things. The flat and things," Remus says, focusing on the weave of the curtains and not the way Sirius's fingers are moving against his stomach.

"The flat was alright. Nice, sharp corners, utilitarian fixtures. You'll like it. It's very practical."

"And the meeting?" Remus says, his voice a little higher than normal.

"Oh, you know. Drinks were had, propositions made. They want to name a wing of the Ministry after me, the usual."

"Of course," Remus says, because he can't remember any other words. Sirius's hair is tickling his neck, and Remus is afraid he is going to scream, or make some equally telling sound. He's no good at this part – at the starting. The _finishing_ he is good at, or so Sirius assures him, but the starting he hasn't mastered. It's never been an issue, really, because Sirius is all start, start, start, all the time, which has worked well for them, until now.

Sirius's fingers have stopped moving, and he is being very still, and that is alarming in and of itself. What's more alarming though is that Remus is not sure how much longer he is going to be able to follow suit. His toes wiggle. His lips swish back and forth. His fingers rub tiny circles against the sheet beneath them. He is going to – oh god, he is going to explode. And why isn't Sirius _bloody doing anything?_

"Well, I'm spent." Sirius says resignedly.

"You're _what_?"

"Spent. I'm tired. Am I sleeping in your bed tonight, or are you planning to relocate? Or we can both sleep here, but _you're _going to have to put on some pajamas because your trousers are all itchy, and you know how delicate my skin can be."

"Agghhh!" Remus shouts, and rolls on top of Sirius, pinning him to the bed by his hips.

"Well, this is new," Sirius says casually.

"I'm – Sirius, do you know how long you have been gone?" Remus realises his voice sounds strained and panicked, but if it keeps Sirius from wanting to _sleep_, of all things (after being gone! For _days_!), then so be it.

"About, what, four days?"

"And three hours. And twenty-two minutes."

"Is this your subtle way of telling me that you missed my love-sugar?"

"Your what?"

"That you need my sweet, sweet lovin'?"

"Oh _god_, not anymore."

"That you want a taste of my honey pot?"

"Do boys even have a—don't answer that. Stop it. Please. I am not above begging."

"Wait, I have another!"

"No! No, no, no."

"Please?"

"Don't you dare—"

"That you've lost that lovin' feeling?"

"Alright, that's it—"

Remus wraps his hands around Sirius's throat and makes a spectacle of strangling the life out of him, until Sirius splutters dramatically and goes limp.

"Oh dear, I've killed him," Remus says, still sitting on Sirius's thighs. He yawns. "With all that natural charm, that marble jaw-line, to have died with his... precious flower in tact. Such a waste."

Without meaning to, Remus thumbs Sirius's jaw and then his lower lip, watching the muscles quiver and tighten. Sirius opens one eye and stares up at Remus, searching his face.

"You know... If you're going to murder me, the least you could do is shag me to death."

Remus gulps. It's a joke, it's all a joke. It is, really. Isn't it?

"Is that so?"

"Yes. It is."

"Well. Good to know."

Remus must sound as terrified as he feels, because Sirius suddenly looks sheepish and adds hastily, "You know I'm just taking the piss, right? It's not like we have to – I mean, _right now_, of all things."

"What's wrong with now?" Remus hears himself say. Oh bugger. He didn't mean to say that. Did he?

"Err... Well, nothing. Nothing, I just." Sirius makes a huffing sound and looks away. He looks unsure. Remus has never seen him look unsure. It makes Remus's insides warm, and he wants to kiss Sirius. He wants to touch Sirius's skin. He wants to—

Oh.

"James is with Lily," Remus says casually, as though he were mentioning the weather.

"He is. For the night."

"And Peter is asleep on a couch downstairs." Why is he still talking? Why is his mouth saying these things while his brain shrieks _Oh sweet Merlin on a cracker what am I saying?_ in increasingly high pitched tones?

"He was when I came in."

"And we are..."

"Here."

"And alone." When did his voice start sounding so rough? And why isn't Sirius blinking?

"Very alone."

"And... Ok, say something, Sirius. I need you to just – just keep talking," Remus says, a bubble of fear rising in the back of his throat. He feels like his organs have suddenly become mobile, and his appendix is lodged in his throat.

Sirius sits up so that they are face to face, with Remus straddling his lap. At the exact same moment, they reach for each other's shirts. The perfect coordination of their motions startles them both so that they pause momentarily and stare dumbly at one another. Sirius shakes his head a little and starts to undo Remus's buttons. He says, "Ok, ok, talk. I can talk. I talk a lot. Errh, what do I talk about, usually?"

"Sex? Although that seems redundant. Pranks? Your family?"

"Oh god, don't even _mention_—"

"Sorry! Uhm... your hair? Your—" Remus catches his fingernail on Sirius's second button.

"Hair! I have hair. I have good hair. It is shiny and attracts many suitors."

"On second thought, something else, I think."

"Like what?" Sirius seems to be struggling with a button, and Remus quietly sympathises, knowing full well that his is the sort of shirt with holes that are just a _bit_ too small, and you can never work them properly without complete concentration, which he is pleased to note Sirius cannot muster.

"I don't bloody know! Anything, Sirius, just, keep talking to me, please."

"Alright. Ok. Food? Food! I like food. You like food. What kinds of food? If I talk about chocolate will it get you all revved up?" He asks, waggling his eyebrows.

"Not necessary," Remus says dryly, glancing ever-so-briefly downwards.

"Oh—" Sirius's voice cracks. "Right."

"Ahhh!" Remus says triumphantly, managing at last to pull apart the last button.

"Oh, bugger this," says Sirius. He pushes Remus backwards onto the bed and tears his shirt open so that buttons go flying off every which-way. They are now upside-down on the bed, with Remus's head lying dangerously close to the end, and Sirius positioned firmly between his legs.

"I like this shirt!" Remus protests, without thinking.

"You'll like this better," Sirius says, his voice dark and wicked. He bites Remus's chest.

"Wait, Sirius!"

"WHAT?" He says, a little too loudly, staring up at Remus.

"Trousers. Trousers," Remus repeats lamely, making a frantic gesture.

"Right!"

Sirius climbs off him, and yanks Remus's too-loose trousers and pants down in one sure motion. Remus chokes on his own saliva, and he is certain his eyeballs are about to tumble onto the floor, but some desperate, raging instinct takes over and he kicks until his legs are free of clothing.

When he looks up, Sirius is standing beside the bed, and he is extremely naked. It occurs to Remus that he has never really _seen_ Sirius naked. He's touched Sirius naked, and he's kissed Sirius naked, but there was never a lot of looking – or lighting, for that matter – involved. And Remus is naked, too. It's all very unsettling.

"Stop thiiiinking about iiiiit," Sirius says in what he probably intends to be a sing-song voice, only it comes off a little too predatory.

"Not thinking, just... Looking," Remus says, and immediately regrets it.

"Oh, uh... Not a problem," says Sirius, and he winks lecherously. He climbs back onto the bed, pulling the curtains closed around them, casting them in dim, red-tinged light. Sirius looks – scared? Awkward? It's hard to tell, because neither of these emotions is typical for him.

Then they are just _sitting _there, not touching, not talking, not wearing any clothes. Remus wants to stare obscenely at Sirius (who is _naked_, don't you know, and _right bloody there_) but somehow he can't bring himself to look. Something has to happen, and it has to happen in the next three seconds or else Remus going to be forced to commit hara-kiri on the bedpost to counteract all the nudity and shame.

"Look, I'm not... certain... how this is supposed to go..." Sirius begins uncertainly.

"Me either," Remus is quick to add.

"But I think... I _think_ we're going to have to, you know... touch or something. Eventually."

Remus nods, but he can't make his arms work. What is wrong with his arms? Are they still there? He can't feel them. What if his arms have fallen off and he shall forever be the armless werewolf, doomed to wander the streets opening jars with his feet for pocket cash. And more to the point, why is he so damn concerned about his arms when they are not the part of his anatomy that is demanding his undivided attention _now, now, right now, thank you_.

Sirius hesitates a moment, then reaches out his hand towards Remus's face, cautiously, as though Remus were made of sharp edges. Two fingers (a little shaky, Remus notices) touch Remus's cheekbone and something happens, and then they are _definitely_ touching again.

* * *

Sirius is mildly concerned that he is going to die. He's been in more dangerous situations, he supposes (a certain impulsive Apparition into the women's at the Hogshead springs to mind), but he's never been this _nervous_ before. And over what? Over sex? Over Remus? It's absurd! They are being stupid, so Sirius stops being stupid and kisses him.

He misses Remus's mouth, of course, because he wasn't counting on their both rocketing forward at the same moment. His mouth lands somewhere in the vicinity of Remus's eye-socket, and though this is obviously not ideal, it could be worse. Remus is all over his face, pressing kisses everywhere, never staying still long enough for Sirius to find him. He feels like he's on a wild goose chase, only he's blind and horny and so is the goose. His fingers firmly in Remus's hair settle the matter, and when their lips finally meet, Sirius forgets what lungs are all about.

"Are we really?" Remus mutters against his mouth.

"You better believe we are."

"Oh... ok. Do we have – do we need?"

"Hang on." Sirius reaches out from the curtains and feels around for a moment. He produces his wand and mutters a spell that he hopes is a real spell and not just every dirty magazine he's ever read having him on. Apparently, it is, because Remus's eyes grow wide and his hips twitch almost imperceptibly towards Sirius's (naked, so very, very naked) body. Sirius grins and tries not to look too pleased with himself.

"Where did you learn—"

"I just thought, you know, with the snogging and what not? It seemed err… practical?" He hopes he is conveying the proper proportions of humility and soul-crushing embarrassment.

"Yes, well. Good," says a voice not unlike Remus's from Second Year.

Sirius freezes. He knows what comes next of course, but he's not exactly clear on the appropriate manners for this sort of thing. He knows what fork goes where and how to fold his napkin, but for some reason, his tutor never covered the proper way to ask if someone is up for being fairly violated in the name of getting off.

"So, I should..."

"What? ..._Oh_. Oh, I. Oh, yes, I think so..."

"Here, can you—"

"To the left?"

"Yeah and just, with your legs."

"Right. Is that?"

"No, hang on."

"Slow, Sirius, try to go—"

"Slowly. Got it."

"..."

"..."

"Oh. God."

"Nfffagghhkkkk!"

"Oh. Oh. My god."

"Ah hah hahhhhgghhh."

"Sirius?"

"Ahhh. I. What, yes?"

"You're pulling my hair."

"Oh, sorry."

"S'ok. Is this? Should we be... Should something..."

"Remus?"

"Yes?"

"Be quiet now."

"Right."

And Sirius twists his fingers into Remus's fingers, and presses their foreheads together, and silently pleads with any deity listening that he doesn't look as scared as he feels. Or that if he does, Remus will want him anyway.

* * *

Remus breathes. He hasn't done that in a while. It feels nice. It's a little difficult, what with Sirius's entire weight collapsed on his chest like a large, sweaty bag of sand and bones, but it's still nice. One of Sirius's damp, sticky hands is tangled in Remus's damp, sticky hair, and the other is tracing nonsense shapes on the side of Remus's face. Their legs are all mixed up. Remus's left arm is numb. It's all completely horrific. It's all completely blissful.

"Nugghh," Sirius says into Remus's cheek.

"My thoughts exactly."

Remus puts his hand on the small of Sirius's back. It's slippery. He moves his hand up Sirius's spine, which is also slippery, and when Sirius shivers, it makes Remus smile.

"We'll have t'move someday, you know," Remus says lazily. Sirius's fingers move from Remus's cheek to the junction of his jaw and ear, then to his throat. Remus swallows.

"M'not moving," Sirius grumbles.

"Until?"

"Ever. 'til ever."

"Well, that's going to be difficult to explain when next year's Seventh Years try to move in."

Sirius's laugh is low and rough, like sandpaper and some sort of jazz instrument. Remus never cared much for jazz. Too chaotic, too unpredictable. _Like sex_, his brain helpfully supplies. Yes. Like that. Except that with most jazz records, Remus does not feel the need to listen to them again. And then once more, possibly, if they aren't too tired.

When he's quite sure his lungs are going to collapse, Remus shifts a little to the left and feels Sirius's weight slide onto the bed beside him. It's funny how small Sirius really is. Well, not _small_ exactly. Sirius is average, probably, not that Remus has collected any figures on the subject, but he _feels_ small when Remus holds him, because he is tight and compact, coiled muscles and blunt angles. Remus on the other hand is lanky, acute angles and skinny limbs; however, he is definitely taller and a little broader in the shoulders these days. It used to be the other way around. Sirius was nearly a head taller until Fifth Year, when Remus shot up like a beanstalk in a fairytale, and Sirius continued to grow at normal boy-pace. It's strange is all, to realise so tangibly that Sirius, who is larger than life, is just a person with a body that he did not choose. It's frightening to think about, so Remus tries not to, mostly, but it's more difficult when Sirius's very mortal body is pressed against his, breathing and living and susceptible to all the dangers bodies are susceptible to: curses, decapitations, stab wounds, disease, and old age.

Remus wraps himself around Sirius, unconsciously, and breathes, inhaling the smell that in so many ways _is Sirius_. There are a lot of things he likes about Sirius that are physical. It's not just the fact that he's graceful in exactly the same way that Remus is not, or that he has eyes like knives – but smaller, subtler things, too. The slight off-centeredness of his nose from a fistfight with Regulus that he refuses to discuss. The rough calluses on his hands that make Remus shiver when they touch his skin. The way his lips shrink inward when he concentrates. They're all meaningless, corporal things that ultimately have nothing to do with _who Sirius is_ – except that they _do_.

When Remus was young and his body was constantly being torn apart and reconfigured, he was always told that it's not what's on the outside that counts, it's _who you are inside_. Only, as he's gotten older, Remus has come to understand that it's both. It's a delicate combination of the things you can't see and the things you can, the outward signs of the inner madness that make the man. And neither can truly exist without the other, no matter what his mother tells him. It's a sobering realisation. It's admitting that they are not forever, that they are so utterly dependent on these fragile bodies and breakable minds, and that they are, essentially, the most vulnerable things in the world.

Perhaps this is what it means to grow up. Adulthood, Remus believes, is carrying around this knowledge, this fear with you all the time, and not going completely bonkers.

* * *

"_I can't bloody believe this!" Sirius shouts, entering the dormitory like a tropical storm-front, more violent than the hot September rain that is currently drenching the castle, making it swollen and full._

"_What are you on about?" James says, without looking up from his broomcare manual._

"_Of all the ridiculous – There are so many of them, and it just had to be – Fuck!"_

"_You're scaring Peter," Remus says mildly, trying to catch Sirius's eye. Peter glares in Remus's direction, but doesn't object._

"_What are you on about, Pads?" James repeats, setting aside his book and looking mildly concerned._

"_My uncle, the decent one, Alphard – he went and died. Tosser."_

_For a moment, no one is sure how to react. None of them, including Remus, really understand all the complicated ins and outs of Sirius's family, so they generally keep quiet and follow Sirius's lead when he gets like this. It's been better the past year or so – without holidays at home to fuel the fire, Sirius is no longer likely to smash things at the sight of his brother, or shout obscenities whenever relatives come up in conversation – but it's still a minefield that no one is too keen to tread._

_James musters all the courage within arm's reach and says, unassumingly, "Err, that's terrible?"_

_Remus would speak but he's too busy watching Sirius's movements, the lines of his shoulders and the set of his jaw, trying to feel (the way he sometimes can with Sirius) what he needs to do. It might be a canine thing, but Remus suspects that it's more a result of growing up in the same room. Sometimes, it's as though they are tuned to the same frequency, one that the others can't quite hear. It doesn't make them any closer (like James and Sirius are closer) but it allows Remus to know sometimes what Sirius needs to hear without having to ask._

"_Were you close with him?" Remus asks carefully._

"_Yeah! I mean, not pillow fights and braid each other's hair close, but we got on. And he was, I don't know. He wasn't like them."_

_Sirius collapses on his bed looking annoyed. James takes this as his cue to clear out. He leans close to Remus and mutters, "Perhaps we'd better—" and jerks his head towards the door. Peter doesn't hesitate, and is out of the room before Remus can answer._

"_Right, no, you go. I'll be along, just let me get my books," Remus says quietly, eyeing Sirius from across the room._

_James shrugs and thumps after Peter, who is probably halfway to India already._

_Sirius is sitting very still. When normal people are upset, they tend to gesticulate and flail about, but Sirius's brain is wired backwards. When Sirius is upset, he goes very tense and still, a taut rope about to snap, and Merlin help the bystander who sets him off._

_Cautiously, without any sudden movements, Remus moves from his desk to sit on his own bed, facing Sirius._

"_What was he like?"_

_Sirius slides his eyes towards Remus but says nothing._

"_Was he – was he uhm—" _Was he like you? _Remus wants to ask, only he thinks this is perhaps not the right thing to say._

"_He was first rate," Sirius says simply. He crosses his arms tightly across his chest and gives no indication of continuing._

_Remus stares at his hands. He hates feeling like this – useless and inept. If James were here – but James, quite sensibly, has scampered off, and it's left to Remus. Maybe James was onto something. Maybe all Sirius needs is for them to bugger of for a while and let him brood and break things, and then later for them to pretend like nothing happened, even if their possessions are slightly abused and out of place. Remus stands up to leave. He takes three steps and Sirius says, "He _liked_ me, Moony."_

_Remus turns around. Sirius hasn't moved and is staring resolutely at the ceiling. If anything, he's gotten stiller, but Remus knows, like he knows his own heartbeat or the phases of the moon, that he can't leave._

_Without thinking, Remus walks over to the edge of Sirius's bed. He's not sure if he should say something, but he gets the sense that his job is to be there, and that'll be quite enough. Wordlessly, Sirius shifts over a little, away from Remus, and his eyes dart purposefully to Remus's face. Cautiously, Remus sits, then lays down beside Sirius, eyes on the ceiling, shoulders brushing. Their forearms touch and Remus's skin tingles. Lightning strikes close by._

"_He was my family, and he liked me," Sirius says softly._

_Remus's throat feels too small. _

_Sirius has never been the sort of boy that you can coax words out of, so Remus doesn't try; he just lies there and hopes that he is doing it right. He wishes he were a sponge and that he could sop up whatever emotion Sirius is leaking into the atmosphere, tuck it away, hide it in the hollows of his own bones where it'll never bother them again. He could bear it, really he could. He knows what pain feels like, especially pain that is as legitimate as it is tainted with self-pity and uncertainty. Sirius shouldn't have to know what that feels like. He doesn't deserve it._

* * *

Sirius wonders idly if Remus is still awake, so he whispers, "Are you still awake?"

"Yes."

Remus's hand coasts along Sirius's back, coming to rest against the back of his neck, which is wet and cold.

"Well, let me know when you're asleep. I should like to vanish into the night before you wake up."

Remus's laugh just then is like thunder, low and rumbling, and he can't hear it so much as feel it. "I shall be heartbroken, pining away for you always."

Sirius smirks.

"Every howl at the moon shall be your name – in Werewolfish, of course," Remus continues, his voice rich with amusement.

"In that case, I'll try to remember your name, too. Rufus was it?"

Remus snorts and massages the back of Sirius's neck, absently.

"Mmmmphggh," Sirius grunts, pressing back into Remus's fingers, "keep that up and I'm still going to be here in the morning."

"I will keep that in mind as a strategy for future trysts."

"Future what nows? I thought you wolfy types mated for life or something."

"Pshh, what a load of bollocks. We only say that because girls think it's terribly romantic. Drives 'em wild."

"Are you implying that after such vigorous and incredible sex, I might not always be your main squeeze?"

"Well, how do I know that was good sex? I don't have a sufficient basis for comparison."

Something in Sirius's stomach twists unpleasantly, but he plows onward. "And what would you consider 'sufficient'? Two? Ten? Fifty-seven?"

"Fifty-seven? Don't be ridiculous. I'll need at least a hundred goes at it to tell if that was _good_."

Sirius bites his collarbone.

"Aggh! Have you had your shots? Look, if it makes you feel better, I'm sure you'll be in the top ten. Fifteen, at least. You're the sentimental favorite," Remus says, and presses his lips to Sirius's hair.

On the ragged, untamed edge of Sirius's brain there dwells an uncertainty, a lingering hint of doubt that _perhaps_ things hadn't gone as well as he thinks, and that _perhaps_ Remus is just too kind and unassuming and Remusy to mention it – but the slow, deep pressure of the fingers digging into his muscles siphon away tension and make it impossible to get worked up about anything.

Sirius feels a swell in the center of his chest, warm and uncomfortable, stretching his being in ways it isn't used to. He's all contradictions – boneless relaxation and dizzying insecurity, painful exposure and shadowy, secret in places. He wants to let Remus inside of him, into the unlit corners and decrepit rooms that even he doesn't visit these days, because he thinks – he knows that Remus will exorcise the dark things that lurk and loom.

"Did I ever tell you about my favorite Christmas?" The words tumble from his mouth like it's an overflow valve, graceless and without warning. Perhaps it's where he's been the last few days, digging through old mementos, reading letters that were not intended to be read that were stuffed in boxes that were not intended to be open, but Sirius feels like _he_ is a box and that it's high time he let someone start sorting him out properly before he ends up dead and in disarray like his uncle.

Remus's fingers still for just a _moment_ before resuming their task.

"No, no I don't believe you did. How old were you?"

Sirius takes a deep, slow breath and decides that it's like Apparition – you just have to shut your eyes and _do it_ and trust that you won't be torn into a million tiny pieces. "I was... eight. So Regulus was, what? Six, I guess. Birthday's in November, so yeah, six. And my uncle, Alphard, the one with the flat, came all the way from London to visit. I'd only met him a few times, but he had weird hair, so I liked him."

"Naturally."

"Yeah. So, he showed up on Christmas Eve and my mother, bless her little soul, wouldn't let me stay up to see him – Reg either, but it serves him right for being such a wanker."

"He was _six_, how could he be a—"

"He _was_. Trust me… Uncle Alphard snuck into my room after my parents were in bed. My tutor, Bendiks, must have just ignored him, because I don't think that man ever slept. Maybe Alphard bribed him, I didn't ask. And he sat on the edge of my bed, and Reg crawled in beside me – we shared a room back then – and he _told_ us things, Moony."

Sirius sighs.

"Like... what?"

"About the world. About stuff that wasn't Noble or Ancient. About muggles and music, and not the sort of music my mother forced us to learn, but real music, the good stuff. He was old a hell, so I don't know how he knew about any of it, but he _did_. Even Reg was smitten; he was just that sort of bloke."

Remus's fingers move downwards, skimming Sirius's shoulder blades and coming to rest against his spine.

"Anyway, the next morning we all acted like nothing had happened. I actually _liked_ keeping it a secret from my mother."

"Red flag, much?"

"Pipe down, I'm being terribly nostalgic over here."

"Forgive me."

"Never. At any rate, when Alphard left, he hugged me – like, _really_. Not the way my parents always buggered it up. And he told me his address and said that if either of us ever wanted to come stay, we could, and he wouldn't even tell our mother. Naturally, I wanted him nominated for sainthood." Sirius pauses, unsure if he should keep talking.

"He sounds great," Remus says.

"Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was really, really top notch... Anyway, he's dead now. They killed him, of course."

Remus shifts his hips a little, and his foot finds Sirius's foot and their toes touch.

"They – who killed him?"

"Death Eaters. My family. Semantics."

"But he – how do you know?"

"Well, it's obvious, in'it? One day he was fine, and the next—"

"But, but he was old, right? How do you know he didn't just..."

Anger flairs in Sirius's stomach. Not anger _at_ Remus exactly, but anger that Remus has ignited. The unfairness of it all. The need to be understood, trusted.

"_No_, Moony, he did not 'just' anything. They killed him. They did. Even if they didn't hold the wand to his head – which I think they probably did– they ran him down. They killed him," he repeats again, with emphasis. He needs Remus to get this, because it's important and because he's never had anyone else to tell.

"Padfoot… It's not right, is it?" Remus says, his voice softer and warmer than the places where their bodies press together.

The anger simmering in him dissipates suddenly, and Sirius feels a wave of relief rush over him. He wants to hug Remus, except that he already sort of is, so he settles for squeezing him a bit tighter and twining their fingers together, fiercely.

"S'not," he mutters against Remus's bare, scarred chest.

* * *

Remus feels like he is clutching a live explosive, only it's his words rather than his movements that might set it off.

"Hey," Sirius whispers, raising himself slightly so that they are face to face. "Kiss me," he says quietly.

Remus does.

"Kiss me, again," Sirius says when their mouths break apart.

Remus does, again, harder this time, like he means it.

"Kiss me, again, and this time don't stop."

"For how long?" Remus asks, fighting a sloppy smile.

"For forever. Don't ever stop. Nothing bad can happen unless we stop long enough to let it."

"I don't know that your logic is quite—" but Sirius's eyes are large and desperate looking, so Remus kisses him again, and kisses him some more, and keeps kissing him, trying to pull away the anger and rejection in Sirius's mouth, the bitter taste of innocence that he never had a chance to enjoy. And he doesn't quite make it to the end of forever, but he manages to keep it up until Sirius is nearly asleep, which he hopes is close enough.


	11. Consistent Things

"Padfoot, I will have you killed. Please do not make me. It will put such a black mark on my record," James says, shoving Padfoot off his bed, where he had been rubbing himself vigorously against James's jumper. Padfoot scrambles to land on his feet then nips at the tender back of James's knee.

"Stop it! No biting, we've discussed this."

"No, we've discussed biting when _I_ do it. You never said anything about Padfoot biting you," Sirius says from the spot on the floor where Padfoot had just been.

"I think it might be implied. Hello, you've drooled on my underpants again. Bad dog," says Peter, carefully extracting the offending garments with the tip of his wand and placing them in a pile, as though they might be a bad influence on the rest of his pants.

"Well, maybe you should stop storing food in your drawers when there's a dog about. Ever consider that?" Sirius suggests.

"Oh I'm sorry, but that's the only place in this room safe from thieving hands. Or _so I thought_."

"Pete, no one wants to eat day-old chips out of your y-fronts," James says, fussing with his hair in the mirror. His hair retaliates by lying down momentarily, then springing up at odd angles when he least expects it. "Yarrghh!" James screams, rubbing his head furiously, mostly out of spite.

"Lay off mate, you'll be bald before you're thirty," Sirius says exasperatedly.

"It won't matter," says James, giving his hair one last cursory scrub, "I plan to be dead by then. My tombstone will read, 'James Potter: Man's Man, Marauder, Shagged by Lily Evans So Hard He Died'."

"Or what about 'James Potter: Girly Man, Enormous Wanker, Punched in the Jaw So Hard His Head Fell Off'?" Lily says, leaning against the doorframe.

"Great Scott, Evans!" Sirius shouts.

"Lily!" James squeaks at the same moment, his face going splotchy and pink.

"Hello, love. I see you're ready to go? I need to buy a new quill on the way, since _someone_ snapped mine in half."

"But you were doing that thing, the thing with your hair in your eyes. You can't hold a man responsible!" James vehemently objects.

"I'm sure," she says absently. "Shall we?" Lily takes him by the hand.

"Just a moment! And what exactly are your intentions towards my daughter?" Sirius says.

Lily smiles sweetly and replies, "Apparently I'm going kill him, although there is some disagreement as to the method."

"In that case, I approve. But young man, I want you home by seven, are we clear?" Sirius says, straightening James's collar maternally.

"Yes, mummy dearest. And I'll meet you there," says James, putting his arm around Lily's waist.

"Meet him where?" Lily asks.

"In my bed, for a sensuous and thorough bout of incest," Sirius supplies. James glares at him and Lily rolls her eyes. "What? The woman asked. Are you ashamed of our forbidden love, Potter?"

James sighs. "You just can't _not _embarrass me, can you? It's like tic. See you later then."

The second the door is closed, Sirius turns to Peter and says "If I am _ever_ that pathetic, please, have me put down."

"Aye," Peter replies with a solemn salute. He is folding his pants and neatly stacking them in his drawer.

Sirius sighs pointedly.

"Alright, that's it, the excitement is too much. Will he fold the blue ones next or the faded-purpley ones? Such suspense. My feeble heart can't bear it. I think I'll go poke Moony for a while," he says, glancing surreptitiously in the mirror. His hair is perfect, because it is always perfect, but he ruffles it self-consciously before heading for the door.

"Have fun. Don't get eaten!" Peter calls after him. A variety of inappropriate responses flash through Sirius's head, but in light of the "Not Making Our Friends Implode with Surprise and Horror" clause that he and Remus have enacted regarding all things Them, he refrains.

* * *

Remus looks down at the table. Just there, on the already worn edge, are eight perfect crescent-shapes dug into the age-softened wood. He is confident that there are two more thumbnail-sized marks underneath, but he doesn't bother to check. He sighs and sits on his hands. There is a book lying open in front of him, something about Goblins and galleons, but even Remus admits it is a prop. All he is concerned about at the moment is surviving the next three hours without breaking anything (at least anything expensive.)

Suddenly, he gets an acute sense of _Sirius_. It's a warm tingle on the delicate blue tips of each nerve and a hum in the air. He's in the library. He's there, on the blurred periphery of Remus's senses, and he's getting closer. Remus waits. His cheeks feel hot. His spine feels cold.

"Oy, Moony. How goes the studying?"

Remus looks up at him, his fingernails digging into the hardwood chair. It's a relief, because _Sirius_ is Padfoot, and Padfoot is something that even Moony likes. Unfortunately, the nearness of _Sirius_ _the boy_ cancels all that out.

"I'm not studying," he says, sounding almost as calm as he intended.

"Oh, silly me. I just assumed, what with the Giant Book of Academic Death you have there. But alas, you know what they say about assuming."

"I am _trying_ to study. I am not studying," Remus repeats. His brain is on fire. His blood is boiling. He's going to die, and it's only four o'clock.

"Then what are you doing, some secret werewolf ritual? Is that sacrificial goat blood on your trousers?" Sirius smiles, cheeky and cool. Remus flinches.

"Something like that," Remus says, deep and gruff in the back of his throat. Sirius looks at him suspiciously. He's leaning close, his hand on the back of Remus's chair.

Remus gets up, slowly, with the utmost control. He carefully slides his chair beneath the table. He throws himself on top of Sirius.

"Alright, then," Sirius says as his back slams into A Brief Analysis of the Economic Consequences of Goblin Uprisings in the Late 17th Century. Remus bites Sirius's lip, and his throat, and his collarbone, and every other bit of skin he can get at – _hard_. His fingernails dig into Sirius's arms. He's completely out of control, which is what makes him let go and take two painful steps back.

"Wait, what's this please? Is this my punishment for breaking your belt-buckle the other day?" Sirius says. He sits up, looking flushed and dishevelled.

"No, it's just. I _can't_ right now. I'm all insane and you're – you smell nice, damn it."

"Erm… I'm sorry?" Sirius says, sounding baffled.

"I just don't think this is a good idea today. Besides, Pomfrey will be looking for me soon. And you might want to button your collar, there's going to be a bruise there," Remus says indicating the already darkening bite mark on Sirius's neck.

"Wait, you're turned on and hyper aggressive, and this is a problem? I'm sorry, it seems we have very different definitions of—"

Remus puts his hand over Sirius's mouth.

"Stop talking! Don't make it worse. Look, I know this is a bit of a blow to your fragile ego, but I could _hurt_ you, you know. And we're in a _library_, for Merlin's sake."

"Bfrree ree fuud rrroee ffoofsfiied!" Sirius huffs against Remus's palm. Remus retracts his hand a little warily, wiping it on his trousers, and Sirius repeats, "But we could go outside and—"

"Sirius!" Remus whispers loudly, praying to god that Madame Pince has been struck deaf and dumb and is not craning her long, vulture-neck to catch every word. "That's beside the point! Now, will you please get out of here before I—" But the rest of his sentence is obscured by Sirius's mouth, which is melded against Remus's own and held in place by Sirius's hand firmly at the nape of his neck.

Remus struggles valiantly for roughly three seconds before letting out a noise of deflation and giving in.

"Now, how's _that_?" Sirius says, leaning back so that he is partially illuminated by the green-hooded reading lamp beside them. The light slices his face in half, like a film-noire villain, which Remus thinks is ironic considering that _he_ will be the real monster in a few hours.

"That's alright, I guess," Remus breathes quietly against his face.

Sirius gives him a slow, mischievous smile. "I have an idea. You'll like it," he says with disturbing smile. "What if…" He begins, shifting from between Remus and the table, "You sit down and I help you unwind." He pulls the chair out and pushes Remus into it, a little forcefully.

Remus's blood pressure spikes. He _thinks_ he should object to this, but he can't think clearly, and all he feels is the moon and all he hears is his own heartbeat, quicker than normal. Sirius winks at him again and Remus makes a squawking noise and stares helplessly. Without a word, Sirius kneels in front of him and slides his palms up Remus's thighs.

"Now, should I tie your hands behind your back or do you think you could not, you know, rip out my hair?"

Remus glares at him and makes a production of tucking his hands behind his back.

"Now, don't make a _sound_," says Sirius the Wolf-Whisperer.

"If we get caught—" Remus says, but his voice is strained.

"We're not _going_ to get caught. Unless I'm so spectacular that you can't control your passionate cries of—"

"Alright, alright, get to business," Remus says, his voice a little desperate sounding.

Sirius grins up at him like the cat that's got the canary and, for once, does as he's told.

* * *

"Where the fuck have you _been_?" Sirius whispers as loudly as he can before it is no longer whispering. He lets the cigarette he is smoking drop and he stamps it out furiously, leaving it sad and crushed among the four other butts already scattered at his feet.

James looks chastised for all of two seconds before smiling like an idiot and saying, louder than he probably should, "Just getting the old wand waxed, eh wot wot?" He winks and looks annoyingly proud of himself.

"Can't you do that without Lily?" Peter asks, quickly stepping back to avoid James's fist.

"Children! That's enough. We have a large, snarly Moony to attend to and I won't have the two of you fighting like the schoolgirls you are," Sirius whispers exasperatedly.

James sighs and ceases trying to find Peter's face with his fist in the dark. "Right, right. Well, come on then," James says. A second later, a large, majestic stag stands in his place, looking confident and disgustingly calm. The next moment, Peter has disappeared and a plump, fluffy rat scampers up the stag's leg, looking alert and on edge.

Sirius shuts his eyes and feels around for the place at the back of his brain that makes his limbs melt and reform. It's not unpleasant, actually, just odd. He sometimes feels guilty that the transforming, and the being transformed, is fun for the three of them. It doesn't seem fair that they spend a night romping around the forest, happy as clams, but for Remus it's torture. Even as Moony.

There is a shift in Sirius's mind, and these complicated, human feelings of sympathy and guilt fade into the background. Padfoot takes a deep breath. The air smells like adventure.

* * *

Remus unbuttons his shirt and folds it carefully, making sure to smooth out the wrinkles and creases. He places it gently on the windowsill. His socks are already folded and stacked neatly. They have matching holes in the toes and look rather droopy and forlorn. Next, he slips off his trousers, which practically remove themselves because he's not wearing a belt and they're a little too big. They fit a few months ago, which would worry him slightly, except that he has already reached his maximum number of Things to Worry About for the day, so weight loss will just have to wait its turn until tomorrow. He folds his trousers and places them atop his shirt. Finally, when he knows he can't wait any longer, he takes off his pants. When he was young, he blatantly refused to take them off, which resulted in a lot of destroyed underthings in the name of dignity. As he's gotten older though, Remus has realised that pants cannot dignify that which is not dignified.

Becoming a werewolf is many things, dignified not being among them.

He can feel it already. It's in the hairs on the back of his neck that stand on end and the slight dizziness of his blood being tugged at like the tides.

Then, suddenly, it hits him like a burst of cold air.

Sharp, _sharp_ sharp, it pulls at his skin, the moonlight tugs on his tendons, tearing them like tissue paper. He looks down at his knees and with a sickening crack they break and bend the wrong way. He screams, but the sound is feral and it doesn't make it hurt any less.

His fingers stretch, forming claws that tear through his fingernails, and he hugs his hands tight against his body, crushing them to stop the throbbing, but only succeeds in cutting his chest. A second later, it doesn't matter, because his ribs pop and snap, expanding and pulling apart, ripping his skin and covering his torso in gashes of red that are the next moment covered in fur and thick animal skin.

He screams again, but this time it is a howl. No matter how many times it happens, hearing such a vicious sound coming out of his own mouth (though it is only _his_ mouth for another minute or so) always makes his blood run cold and a chill run up his (the wolf's) spine.

And then, and then, and then, there's a crash of boards and he jerks around, already feeling the boy in his head being devoured by the wolf (this hurting more than the breaking bones.) Relief rushes over him like cool water, and a big, black puppy launches itself at him, licking his already-healing wounds and biting affectionately at his snout. A stag walks forward slowly with infinite grace and bow its head in submission.

The wolf growls and snaps, but not maliciously. He stands, large paws thumping softly against the dusty wooden floor. His new, steely muscles stretch and pull deliciously, and the night is young.

* * *

Slats of sunlight paint the floor, illuminating claw marks in the wood. Sirius rolls onto his side, grumbling softly as a stray chair-leg digs into his hipbone painfully. Propping himself on one elbow, he scans the room for signs of life. A few feet away, lying on the floor at awkward angles is Remus, thin and bruised, his body curled inwards on itself. He is still asleep, and Sirius is grateful for that, because it means he can see the damage without Remus seeing him.

He hates it, judging the new cuts and scrapes, guessing which ones will fade and which will linger on Remus's skin forever. It makes him feel weak and cowardly, and he is terrified that Remus knows it. No matter how he schools his expression, he suspects that his shock registers in his eyes and in the hard tensing of his mouth.

But today Remus is still sleeping soundly and untroubled. Sirius doesn't want to wake him, because the moment he is conscious it will hurt, and they both know it, even if Remus smiles and laughs and refuses to let Sirius help him to his feet. It's a good thing, too, because Remus's shoulder has a gash in it that makes Sirius's knees wobble. It's thick and red and angry, and werewolf healing abilities aside, it will never truly disappear. A few inches above it, on the soft, pale skin of Remus's neck, there is a different kind of scar – a faded, white mark, jagged and slightly raised. Sirius touches it sometimes, letting his fingertips trace the rises and falls of flesh until Remus shies away. He says he can still feel it sometimes when the moon is swollen and bright, but Sirius suspects that he can _always_ feel it, all the time, when he lets himself.

Sirius kneels and runs his dirty fingers through Remus's hair, smiling as little splinters of wood tumble out and a cloud of dust rises from his head like a halo. Remus is naked, but for some reason it isn't an issue really, even though under normal circumstances the sight (or suggestion, or fleeting thought) of Remus in anything short of a floor-length parka is enough to turn Sirius on faster than the speed of magic. But now, here, in the cold light of morning, it just makes Sirius want to curl around him on the floor and squeeze him half to death.

And where are James and Peter, by the way? Sirius looks around again, and upon noticing a freshly broken stair, remembers Prongs climbing to the second floor with great, lumbering hooves. Wormtail, Sirius is certain, would have trailed along, relying on the stag to provide a barrier between him and the two canines.

Remus stirs, first by pressing into Sirius's fingertips, then with a groan and a sigh, his face contorting with discomfort even before his eyes are open.

"Moooony," Sirius whispers. He never knew he had it in him to be _gentle_ of all things, and protective, but apparently he does, because he feels like his entire being is focused on how to make Remus better _right this second_. Tomorrow isn't soon enough, tonight isn't soon enough, because Remus is in pain _now_ and that's all that counts.

Remus squints up at him, his arm twitching as though he were planning to move but thought better of it when his motion split the cut on his shoulder. "Shit," he mutters.

"Yeah, bit of a scratch you've got there. That'll be a beauty, that will," Sirius says lightly, hoping his voice doesn't give away how much this _bothers_ him.

He remembers when he was small, he fell out of a tree once. A branch caught him in the back of the thigh on his way down, and though the earth was springy and damp, his left arm broke like toy. He screamed so loudly it hurt his ears, and waited for someone to come find him. After a while, he stopped screaming.

When he limped into the house, he found his mother waiting for him in a long, green dress, her hair pulled back into a slick knot and a heavy strand of emeralds around her delicate throat. She was beautiful, with the same grey eyes that Sirius sees in the mirror. The same grey that makes him avoid looking Regulus in the face when he hexes him. Sirius remembers how badly he wanted her to pick him up and just _make it better_, even though the seeds of hate were already in him then. His father walked in wearing dress-robes, dapper and sharp-looking, a proper Englishman, and he glanced first at Sirius and then at his mother. Without being asked, she told him Sirius had been naughty and got hurt, and the two of them strode out of the room, off to some party or ceremony.

He was probably no more than six, but he still hates thinking about it, because he hates admitting, even to himself, that he once wanted them like that, so desperately and with such naïve need. Sometimes, not always, he thinks about how that need when he is with Remus, and it doesn't make him shiver. Only sometimes.

When he looks at Remus, all crumpled and pale, he feels just as weak. Sirius's own body was banged up from the outside, the tree and the ground and his mother's withering glare and his father's indifferent eyes, and it was still such pain that he feels it in his bones. What Remus goes through though is another matter entirely. He used to think that it was _beyond_ pain, but he realised later that this was too convenient. It was just beyond _imagination_. There's a difference.

"I would help you up, but maybe you shouldn't move until Pomfrey gets here. She'll come looking for you soon, right?"

Normally, Remus hobbles into the Hospital Wing around five or six while the rest of them slink back to the dormitory, camouflaged by the early breakfast crowd. It's at least eight though, and while Remus isn't as banged up as Sirius has seen him in the past, the gash on his shoulder (and his chest, it seems) won't allow for much movement.

"She – yeah. You lot should probably be getting on, don't want to get caught with your trousers around your ankles. Literally," he says, and smiles, though there is a twinge of discomfort in his face.

Something inside Sirius lurches. "Don't be stupid, I'm not leaving you to bleed to death, silly twat," Sirius says, irrationally annoyed at the suggestion.

"Well, what are you going to say, 'Oh, hello Pomfrey, don't mind me, I'm just making sure my werewolf boyfriend – yes, I know he's a werewolf, and I'm animagus, fancy that – doesn't ooze all over the floorboards'?"

"Your what now?"

Remus stares at him blankly.

"You called me your boyfriend. Isn't that lovely? Should we make each other promise bracelets and I'll take you home to meet the family?" Sirius says, feeling, for the first time that morning, happy at the thought of explaining Remus to his mother.

"Oh, do be quiet," Remus says, scrambling to sit up.

"No, honestly, it'll be grand. 'Oh mum, nice to see you! Just been a bit busy, what with besmirching the family name and ruining your life. Right, well anyway, I'm a poufter, and this here is my bum-boy. He eats people!'"

Remus laughs, then cringes a little.

"Ok, ok, enough. Are you going to be alright by yourself? You're looking awfully peaky this morning."

"Really, I'm fine. I'll just lie here and moan for a while and the Madame will be along soon."

Sirius looks at him sceptically. "Well, I hate to think of you moaning if I'm not the cause of it."

"I'll be thinking of you?" Remus ventures.

Sirius smiles, and presses his lips to Remus's forehead, and when Remus arches against him a little it makes his heart leap into his throat.

"Where are James and Peter?" Remus asks, glancing around for the first time, his cheeks red with the thought of being seen naked with a Sirius plastered to his face.

"They're in that corner over there, under the Cloak, watching us," Sirius says calmly.

"I hate you, you mutt," Remus mutters, letting Sirius help him into a more comfortable position.

"I hate you, too," Sirius says affectionately, tousling Remus's hair before going to look for their comrades.

At the top of the stairs, he sees James's limp, sleeping form sprawled across a throw rug with Peter lying a few feet away. They snore in unison like a respiratory symphony. Sirius takes a running leap and tackles them both with spread arms. He's not sure why he does this, in hindsight, but he feels edgy and restless, and since he can't tackle Remus for fear of tearing his skin in half like an overstuffed toy, he settles for the next best thing.

"AAAGGHH!" James shouts, wiggling futilely in Sirius's grasp.

"RRFFGHHMMK!?" Peter contributes, slapping feebly at Sirius's shoulder.

"You two are a coupl'a lazy wankers. Get _up_ already, the day's a wasting."

"It's _Sunday_, you poncy arse. Get off'a me!" James yells, kicking Sirius in the head, which takes significant effort and contortion on his part.

"Aggannk!" Peter adds.

"Enough lip outta you, Potter. Our friend Moony is downstairs practically bleeding to death while you lot are up here getting your beauty sleep."

James sits up suddenly, throwing Sirius off of him.

"What'dya mean bleeding? Is he alright? Should we—"

"He's _fine_, he's just got a cut like the Great Wall of China on his shoulder. And chest. And sort of his back," Sirius says, trying to simultaneously talk about it and think about something else.

"Shit," Peter breathes.

"That's what he said."

"What time is it anyway?" James asks, looking around for his trainers.

"Late. Later than usual. Pomfrey will be by soon, we should get out of here," Sirius says begrudgingly.

They shuffle back to the castle without much conversation, cramped and hunched over under the Cloak. James and Peter collapse into bed the minute they are within falling-distance, and it's difficult to tell which of them is asleep faster.

Sirius lies on his bed with the curtains drawn, wondering how soon he can go and see Remus without appearing anxious and pathetic.

* * *

_Spring; Nineteen seventy-six._

_Sirius lunges awkwardly around Pomfrey's plump frame and darts into the large, sunny room. It shouldn't be sunny. It should be dark and fuzzy, reflective of the way the inside of Sirius's head feels right about now. How dare the world go on looking so cheerful? Behind him, he hears Pomfrey sigh and walk out. _

_One, two, three, four solid, manful strides across the hospital wing. The curtains around the bed sway slightly. Sirius raises his arm to push them aside and freezes. One, two, three, four heartbeats of paralyzed fear._

_It's always frightening, seeing Remus the morning after the night before. When they were young and Sirius didn't know what happened to his friend every month, he feared the unknown. When he learned Remus's secret, he started to fear the truth, instead. It's hard to tell which of these fears is worse. Either way, the only thing worse than seeing Remus like this is _not_ seeing him like this._

_But today he's not sure he can do it. He's not afraid of the cuts on Remus's face or the bruises on his arms so much as the look in his eyes. Sirius's outstretched fingers tremble._

_The curtain bursts open._

"_Well?" Says Remus, who is barely visible in the fluffy cloud of bedding._

_Sirius opens his mouth, but he knows that no words will issue forth. He's been trying since sunrise to work out what he needs to say, to do to make things – well, not right, because he's pretty sure that ship's sailed – _better_. Tolerable. Liveable._

"_I — sorry," Sirius says. It sounds pathetic and half-arsed. The only aspect of talking Sirius has ever had a problem with is how to stop doing it, so this sudden, crushing verbal impotence is unnerving. Apparently, _this_ is what it feels like to _not know what to say_. He thinks of James babbling on about Lily, and how he once told him to man up and just _talk to her, for Christ's sake_. James had whined that he didn't know how to talk to her, and Sirius had laughed. He thinks he might owe James an apology and possibly a gift of some sort._

"_Well, sorry for what? Sirius, _please_ quit looking at me like that and tell me what's happened. I've been stuck in here all morning and getting information from Pomfrey is like trying to milk a blast-ended _skrewt_ – _not_ on."_

"_Ughk," Sirius breathes, and sits down in the chair beside Remus's bed, half by accident._

"_What? Is everyone alright?" Remus says this with the utmost composure, but Sirius can see the fear in him, lurking just below his too-pale skin._

"_Yeah! No, everyone's… fine," Sirius says hesitantly. He wants to lie, to close his eyes and lie and lie and lie, but he _can't_. "Snape knows." It's like ripping off a bandage, quick but still painful, no matter what your mother tells you (not that Sirius's mother told him anything about bandages, except how to make other people need them.)_

_Remus sucks in a big gulp of air and lets his head fall back against the massive pillow. "How?"_

"_He… He sort of got into the Shack." Oh god, what has he done? Has anyone in the history of the universe ever been so inconceivably idiotic, _ever_? How does he manage to walk around and breathe at the same time without falling over and drooling on himself?_

"_How?"_

_Sirius closes his eyes tightly and takes a deep breath. "I told him how. I know! I am so, so stupid, and I didn't _think_, because I never think! I don't! He just – he made me _really_ angry Moony, and I thought it'd get him smacked around by the Willow _atworst_. I never thought it'd – that you'd—" he runs out of words like a garden hose petering dry. He wants to crawl under the bed and _die_, painfully._

"_Alright. And he's – is he ok?"_

"_He's Snape. I guess it depends on your definition of "ok". He's a snivelling, greasy prat, same as before."_

"_But not the kind that turns into a giant wolf once a month?"_

"_No, not – are you making a _joke_, Remus Lupin?"_

_Remus slides his eyes towards Sirius. "I don't think that was a joke, technically. More like humorous phrasing."_

_Sirius can feel his eyes grow wide and his mouth fall open. "I – You? You should be furious! You should still be yelling at me when we graduate. You – you should hit me, at least!"_

_In one smooth motion, Remus sits up and punches Sirius in the side of the head, hard enough to make his ear ring. There is a stunned silence._

"_You hit me!" Sirius cries, clutching his ear delicately and sounding only half as gob-smacked as he feels._

"_You told me to."_

"_Yeah, but you're supposed to be all mature and diffident about it. You're not supposed to actually, _literally_ hit me. That's not how this is supposed to go! And you aren't sorry, are you?"_

"_Now _I'm_ supposed to be the one who's sorry?"_

"_That's not what I meant."_

"_Are you saying you didn't deserve it?" Remus asks mildly._

"_Well, _no_, I did, but you just – you're _Moony_, you don't punch people."_

"_Apparently, I do," Remus says, a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth._

_Sirius's stomach feels like it's floating, and he knows, he just _knows_, that somehow, despite all manner of logic to the contrary, they will all be ok. It's almost enough to make him forget about the throbbing in his ear, but Remus is a lot stronger than you'd think, and he has a mean right-hook._

"_That hurt, you know," Sirius says quietly._

"_Good. I – good. I'm glad." Remus sounds oddly resigned, like a parent dealing out punishment._

"_I'm sorry. I _am_," Sirius repeats._

_Remus looks up at him, his eyes warm and sensible. He stares at Sirius's face, and Sirius does his best not to flinch, even though he feels like making a run for it, for some reason._

"_I know," Remus says quietly._

_Sirius spends the rest of the day in the Hospital Wing, and when James and Peter stop by, neither of them will talk to him until Remus assures them it's ok. When curfew rolls around, he doesn't even have to beg or fake a deadly illness for Pomfrey to let him stay, she just bustles in with dinner for Remus and the tray has an extra goblet and two sandwiches instead of one. Sirius falls asleep in the chair, collapsed over on the bed, and when he wakes up in the morning, Remus's hand is tangled in his hair, but he finds he doesn't mind._

* * *

"Ow bloody _ow_," Remus whines, grateful for the early hour and the empty room.

If he lies perfectly still with his left wrist flexed and his head tilted to the side and doesn't breathe often, it's not so bad, really. It doesn't feel _good_ by any stretch, but he's had worse. Aside from one fairly impressive chunk of flesh that he seems to have misplaced, the rest of his body is relatively unscathed. The odd bruise is already starting to heal, and aside from a few broken fingers (that Madame Pomfrey bandaged so tightly he can't feel his entire hand) there's very little collateral damage.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out with a high-pitched groaning sound. This helps for some reason.

"Mister Black, I _assure _you, there is nothing to be concerned about!" Pomfrey's voice cries from somewhere in the vicinity.

A loud, bustling sound emanates from behind the curtain, and Remus sits up a little against his pillow. It's large, larger than Remus's torso, and it smells like lemons.

"Well, if there's nothing _wrong_, then I'll just _pop_ my head in and—"

Pomfrey lets out a strangled cry of frustration, and there is even more bustling, and then the sound of feet pelting towards Remus's bed.

"Hello, old chap!" Sirius says, popping his head through the curtains.

"Wotcher, Padfoot. How are our other furry friends? Sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to them this morning, what with the profuse bleeding and all."

"They're fine. Lazy bastards though, the both of them. They've been asleep since about six seconds after we got back. Did you sleep?" He asks, sitting down carefully on the edge of the bed. His hand rests casually on Remus's thigh, but the tenseness of Sirius's fingers suggests that he is very conscious of this placement.

"A little," Remus lies. When he tries to sleep, his head can't maintain the required fifty-three degree angle needed to keep his shoulder from hurting, which resulted in jerking awake several times (and the jerking didn't feel great, either.)

"Good. I'm sure all that snarling and being terrifying can really take it out of you. Look, if you want to rest I can—"

"No, you don't have to leave," Remus says quickly, instantly forgetting the positives of a nice, empty room.

"Good, 'cause I wasn't planning to. I was just going to offer to be quiet," Sirius says, smiling. It lights up the bloody room, his smile. It's like a spotlight that shines only for you, except that it has that effect on everyone, which is why Remus privately relishes the fact that it really is for him, "exclusively."


	12. The Things Legacies Are Made Of

**Oh wow I am so, _so_ late. I'm sorry guys, I suck at life this week. I'd love to promise it'll never happen again, but I'm moving next weekend, so updates may be a bit irregular until I'm settled. Anyway, again, forgive me, I am awful.**

**If this feels like a cliff hanger, don't worry, the next bit will pick up where this part leaves off.**

* * *

The air is hot, far hotter than it has any right to be in May, but then British air is spiteful and determined to make Sirius sweat all over his last clean shirt (though clean is, admittedly, a relative term.) The lake water sloshes lazily against the shore and sticky, sugared eleven-year-olds scamper around, delighted with the sun and the breeze and the encroaching end of term. He breathes deeply, enjoying the first hint of summer on the air. By June, the smell will be thick and solid, and even people without canine senses will be able to perceive it, but right now it is subtle, a secret thing that only he can detect. Well, he and Remus, of course.

Remus is sprawled on the grass a few feet away, his arm slung over his face to block the sun and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. His skin is pleasantly pink, and a thin sheen of sweat has pooled in the crevices of his collarbone. Sirius has the faint urge to lick him, but he refrains. It's too hot, and anyway he's pretty sure Remus would scream like a massacre if he did (not that he doesn't enjoy making Remus scream, on occasion.) No, right now he is content to just sit and stare, and occasionally splash passing children with lake water with a surreptitious flick of his wand. It's amusing and it keeps them from getting too close.

It's pleasant here in the sunlight, with Remus. It's pleasant in ways that Sirius did not previously understand, or even want around, but now that they're here and looking fairly comfortable, he finds he's rather alright with it. They are, for lack of a less vomit-worthy term, _involved_, Remus and he, which is something Sirius once spent a great deal of effort avoiding. The very concept makes Sirius feel edgy and caged, like a dog in a kennel, but when Remus makes jokes about their being like an old married couple and folds Sirius's underpants when he thinks no one is watching, it doesn't feel wrong like it should feel wrong. Much like the pleasantness, it's not so awful, really. It's just… strange. And foreign. But Sirius has always been up for doing new and terrifying things, so why not? It's just another adventure.

"It's a bit creepy, really."

Sirius jumps about a mile. "What?" He says, trying to sound cool and indifferent and not like his heart is beating faster than is decent.

"You staring at me while I sleep."

"If you were asleep, you wouldn't know I was staring."

Remus moves his arm away from his face and tilts his head almost completely backwards to look at Sirius. "Yes. Yes, I can see your point."

"In fact, one might argue that pretending to be asleep while carefully monitoring my movements is much creepier, as you would say, than simply allowing one's self to enjoy the scenery."

Remus's mouth goes lopsided, as it is wont to do when he is torn between saying something cheeky and fairly melting under the duress of Sirius's considerable charms. Sirius has grown more familiar with this particular expression in recent months. It's one of his favourites, and he tries to provoke it as frequently as possible.

"That is just – so I'm _scenery_ now, am I?"

Sirius smiles his most seductive smile. Being seductive while you're sweating through your oxford is an uphill battle, but it helps if the seductie has already proven themselves seduceable. Forty-two times, actually.

"Scenery which I was _enjoying_," Sirius clarifies. He's all about clarification, these days, even when it involves humiliating admissions of the girly variety, because the alternative is so, _so_ much worse, and might result in a marked decrease in Naked Time with Remus.

"I see," Remus says. He waggles his eyebrows in a manner distinctly reminiscent of the way Sirius likes to waggle _his_ eyebrows when he is being subtly inappropriate. His first instinct is to ask Remus where he gets off stealing his carefully crafted filthy eyebrow waggle, but this instinct is quickly overridden by the sudden delight at seeing Remus look so filthy in the first place.

"No, _I_ see," Sirius says, returning the gesture. They must look like a pair of madmen, sitting there on the grass furiously waggling at each other, but if Remus doesn't care then Sirius certainly isn't going to mention it.

Remus laughs. The sound is warm and bright, and it mingles in the air with the sounds of the water and the breeze in the trees. If Sirius's self control is a camel, Remus's laugh just then is the proverbial straw that smashed his spine to bits. Without really thinking, he pounces on Remus, snuffling his doggy nose into the cool, shaded place behind Remus's ear.

It's strange, Sirius thinks, to spend so much of your time thinking about, obsessing over, being with another person in such a terrifically intimate way, and then to walk around as though nothing ever happened. Sometimes it feels like he is living a lie in which he has never seen Remus without his pants. Not that he's about to start laying down ultimatums or anything, but it does seem worth noting, for future consideration.

"Padfoot! You weird thing, clear off," Remus yells, squirming delightfully beneath Sirius's body. Sirius places a careful bite on the delicate, sun-golden skin of Remus's chest where his shirt hasn't been blocking the sun as it should.

"Ah, but you're comfortable."

"I am not comfortable, _not_ comfortable!" Remus continues to yell, twisting and laughing helplessly.

"You are! You're like a fluffy mattress or a water-bed," Sirius marvels, emphasising his point with a quick hip-shake, before collapsing on top of Remus.

"What are you fairies doing?" James voice calls from above them.

"Offending Moony's dignity," Sirius says casually, allowing himself one more lick along Remus's collarbone before rolling onto the grass beside him. "Not jealous are you, love?"

James makes a bizarre noise of distaste in his throat that sounds a bit like a duck being drowned.

"Oh, come on Prongs, you know you'll always be my best girl."

"What's that make Remus, your dirty mistress?"

Sirius knows without looking that Remus is buttoning his shirt or straightening his collar or something equally fidgety.

"I'd say 'dirty' is a bit of an understatement. Try filthy. Wanton, even. The things this little harpy gets up to, Prongs, well, I'm sorry, but a man has needs. And ever since you landed yourself a busty ginger you just haven't _been there_ for me physically, the way that Moony is."

Remus coughs, and Sirius is almost sure that what he means is _If you do not stop, your needs will not be met in the near future._ Fortunately, James is laughing, giving Sirius a moment to regroup. He forgets sometimes what it is like to hold an actual, human conversation, one in which no one is potentially going to undo their trousers. It's not that the onset of sex has given him a one-track mind, because his mind never had many tracks to spare in the first place. What it has done is occupied that one track far more than it has any right to do.

"So are you just here to ruin our passionate lovemaking, or is there something I can do for you, mate?" He says, scrubbing his palm over his face and reminding himself that he doesn't need Prongs questioning what the two of them are up to when they spend hours "studying."

"Funny you should mention it, actually. I need… a favour." James is glancing around, as though he's about to be assassinated by a passing student.

Remus crosses his legs carefully and places his hands on his knees in full-on mature, confidant mode. Sirius once found a book in a muggle shop filled with illustrations of people sitting and standing and squatting in strange, unnatural poses. The positions were supposed to help you relax or think clearly or some bollocks like that. Sirius thinks that if they made a book of postures designed to make you look reliable and endearing, Remus Lupin would be on the cover of it.

"Perhaps you weren't aware, but tomorrow night is the six months anniversary of mine and Lily's first date."

"Aware? Why, I've been counting down to it for months. Haven't you, Moony?"

Without so much as a glance in Sirius's direction, Remus says, "What do you need from us, Prongs?"

He's _so_ magnificent sometimes. For all that his maturity can be annoying, Remus is always, always the friend you want around when what you need is a Really Good Mate. Sirius pulls it out when the need arises, and disregarding that one really big fuck-up, he's pretty sure he's never buggered it up when the chips were down. Remus though, he's like a bloody saint, all the time, chips up, down, or left of centre.

James looks like something is crawling up his back, slowly and prickily.

"I need… I need you lot to clear out, alright? I know, it's stupid, but, but term's over soon, and I want – I need to ask her something, and I can't with you lot charging in and out like a pack of wildebeests with wands."

Sirius feels his stomach contract painfully and rocket into his skull. Without thinking, he puts his hands on James shoulders and shakes him twice.

"Prongs, I will not let you do this! _We_ will not let you do this! As your mates we are bound by the Code of Marauding to save you from a life of abject domestication, no matter how easy on the eyes—"

"What? Padfoot, are you more out of your mind than usual? I'm not – I'm not going to _propose_, you stupid twat." James jerks himself free of Sirius's somewhat maniacal grip and straightens his shirt indignantly. "What do you take me for?"

When he glances at Remus, he is looking irrepressibly smug, because he is wise in ways that Sirius doesn't understand, and he never takes flying leaps off cliffs of assumption without a parachute and a map and a big, fluffy mattress at the bottom.

"Sorry," Sirius mutters, feeling foolish and chastised, "but when you get all twitchy like that, I can't help but assume the worst."

James glares, but the next second his expression softens. "I know. S'ok."

"Uhm, not to interfere with what I'm sure we'll all look back on as a touching moment, but do you mind if I ask what you _are_ going to ask her?" Remus ventures cautiously.

"I want her to move in with me after the summer," James spits out quickly, as though the words are still new and uncomfortable in his mouth.

"Prongs," Sirius says gravely, "is this just your way of getting into her lacy knickers? Because honestly, I can _give_ you tips and it won't cost you nearly as much as the rent—"

"Like you know the _first_ thing about knickers," Remus mutters.

"What?" James asks innocently.

Remus's cheeks turn a spectacular shade of red and it's all Sirius can do not to giggle like a small girl. "Nothing. You need us out of the dormitory when?" Sirius interjects. The look of relieved thanks on Remus's face is priceless and probably good for at least an illicit feel later on.

"Tomorrow. After dinner until about… The next day."

It's disconcerting to see James like this. James Potter with his roguish dishevelment and his sparkling teeth, his air of confidence that can get him through almost anything (and his gift for jelly-leg jinxes that can get him through almost anything else), James Potter is not supposed to look anxious and desperate. James Potter is not supposed to ask favours, or ask lovely young ladies to move in with him. Adulthood is what has done this to him. It's made him think before he blows things up, and it's made him cautious in ways that make Sirius nervous.

"Well, that's all lovely, but where are we supposed to go?" Sirius asks, trying not to sound as petulant as he suddenly (inexplicably) feels.

"Peter's bunking with – what's that bird's name? The little one?" James makes a shrinking motion with his fingers like he's squashing an insect, which, if you've seen the bird in question, is pretty fitting.

"Amathestia," Remus supplies.

"Yeah, that'ser. I asked him _where _they were, ahem, sleeping, but he got all dodgy about it."

"So are we invited to bunk with her, too? Lovely, obliging girl Pete's got. Sounds like a keeper," Sirius says, intently plucking blades of grass one by one by one, piling up their little green corpses like a mass grave.

"It's fine, Prongs. We'll find somewhere to sleep," says Remus mildly.

Sirius looks up in disbelief. Surely Remus, his partner in crime, his partner in things so good they should be criminal, is not going to cave so easily to the insane demands of a love-stricken deer and his need to mate.

"But where—"

"We'll find somewhere," Remus repeats slowly, glancing ever so briefly into Sirius's eyes. Sirius has a sudden flash of enlightenment through the layers of misplaced annoyance, because Remus looks like he does when he has a secret, even when the secret is just _I'm about to take off your pants_.

"Right," Sirius says roughly, wanting more than anything to drag Remus behind the nearest tree and force him to explain or do something equally satisfying with his mouth.

"Really?" James fairly sighs. It looks like someone has let half the air out of his body and replaced it with helium. "Oh thank god. If you'd said no I was going to have to pay Kingsley to kidnap you. He agreed to do it, too, but he said he couldn't guarantee that 'the dark haired one that is very loud' would be 'unharmed'. His words, you understand."

Remus laughs, and Sirius flicks apart his tiny hill of grassy death, though admittedly without malice. It's very hard to be malicious when Remus is laughing.

"Alright, alright," Sirius says begrudgingly, "But I cannot condone your turning into a huge fag over a pair of tits and what is, frankly, an excessive amount of hair."

"Sirius, that doesn't even make sense on the level that things you say usually make sense. You're slipping," James says.

"I'm not slipping, and apparently Evans isn't either, or you wouldn't be having such a time getting a leg over in the—"

"If you finish that sentence, I think I have to punch you in the mouth. I do, don't I? Defend her honour and whatnot?" James asks.

Remus nods solemnly.

"Et tu, Moony?" Sirius hisses.

"Don't worry, I know you're just cranky because _you're _not getting laid," James says in a disgustingly understanding tone.

Sirius feels his mouth open to set James to rights, and at almost the exact same moment he feels Remus thump him in the back of the head. Fortunately, James is busy tripping over his own feet as he tries to stand up, and notices nothing, as is the general trend.

"Alright, Padfoot, do _not_ violate Moony. He might stop cleaning up after us. I'll see you at dinner."

The moment James is out of earshot, Sirius is quite sure Remus is going to bite his entire face off – not that the biting would be audible, but the girlish shrieking might very well be. He watches Remus's expression intently and also his arms to avoid any surprise blows to the head.

"Sirius, why are you looking at me like that?"

"I wasn't going to say anything."

Remus is staring at him like he's sprouted a third arm out of his ear. "You weren't going to what now?"

"I wasn't going to counter Prongs' attack on my sex-life with a straight-right of 'Oh, but I'm shagging Moony'."

"Straight-right? S'more of a left-hook, if you ask me."

"I wasn't going to," he repeats firmly.

Remus sighs and looks down at his hands. "I know. I just – sometimes you are not one of great foresight and self-control, and I thought I might save us both the – the—"

"Embarrassment?"

"I was going to say 'the psychological trauma of watching our friend implode before our very eyes.' _Is_ it, erhm, embarrassing?"

Remus's head is still down but Sirius can see a look of slight discomfort on his face, as though he's not sure whether he's going to get an answer or a smack in the head.

"I was referring to the humiliation of having to walk back to the Tower with stag-brains in our hair. I – no, 'embarrassment' is the wrong word, I think."

"It's not, not if that's what it… is."

"Remus. Remus, would you please quit trying to light the grass on fire with your eyes?" Remus looks up, and he smiles, for which Sirius is grateful. "It's _not_ embarrassing. You're balmy. But it is something, isn't it? And it – it's such a big something – har, har – that it'd be bigger than we are, you know?"

"I know," Remus says resignedly. "And I can see where you wouldn't want it to be a part of your legacy."

"Oh no, I definitely wouldn't mind it being a _part_ of my legacy. Oh, how the students of the coming generations will speak of us, in hushed, reverent tones. 'Ah, have you not heard of Sirius Black?' They will say. 'He was one of the original Marauders—'"

"There are going to be _other_ Marauders?"

"Hush, wolfman. 'A prankster of mythical proportions, friend to man and beast, and he buggered Remus J. Lupin in every room of this castle, including Dumbledore's office. Twice.' Problem is, I suspect that last bit would rather overshadow the rest. Kids tomorrow, they're just a lot of sex fiends, you know?"

"No, I don't. But I understand what you're saying. And it's not so very important, is it? I mean, whether anyone knows or everyone knows or we lock it up in secret like the Shag in the Iron Mask."

"You make really inappropriate references, did you know that?"

"Sorry," Remus says, smiling sheepishly.

"Don't be. I like it." Without bothering to look around first, Sirius fits his (hot, sweaty) hand against Remus's cheek, and Remus leans into his palm. Somewhere inside him, in the quiet, burning places that only Remus's skin and voice can touch, he knows that this, this moment, could be the only thing anyone remembers about his entire _life_, and it would be absolutely fine.


	13. Things Planned & Things Accidental

**FYI: if you're wondering where this story has disappeared to, there is a link on my profile.  
**

* * *

It's not that Sirius doesn't enjoy a good surprise every now and again. He does, honestly. But the thing about surprises is that they're best when you don't see them coming. _Oh, here, I've brought you an assortment of sweets. Happy Tuesday!_ is a good, unexpected surprised. _Something really, really cool is going to happen in the near future, but I'm not going to tell you what_ is the sort of surprise that makes Sirius antsy and, in turn, annoying.

"Please? Please, please, pleasepleaseplease?"

Remus glances up at him for the first time in several minutes of enthusiastic pleading.

"Please?!"

"No," Remus says quietly, returning to his essay, which is already about as long as most First Years are tall.

"But _Moony_, I'm _begging_. My ancestors would disown me for begging."

"You've already been disowned once, I'm sure a second time couldn't hurt."

"Please? Please? I'll do _anything_, just don't leave me in suspense. My poor stomach can't take it."

"Sirius, you ate an entire chicken at dinner."

"Only the one! Just _tell_ me, I won't tell anyone, honest."

"I strongly doubt anyone would be interested in where we're sleeping."

"'Sleeping'? Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Remus pauses writing long enough to glare.

"Alright, I apologise to your modesty."

"My modesty accepts. Look, I want you to know that I put a great deal of effort into arranging this, and I want you to be surprised, because I know how you like surprises, and I like it when you like things," Remus pauses and looks torn. His face shrinks inward and he chews on the inside of his mouth in a way that makes his lips go lop-sided. Suddenly, Sirius feels guilty for absolutely no apparent reason. "But if you _must_ know, I was planning—"

"Wait! No. I don't have to know. S'fine. I can wait," he mutters begrudgingly. Remus smiles smugly and returns to his essay. Sirius takes a moment to ponder when exactly his priorities realigned, placing "Remus Not Chewing His Face Off From The Inside Out" above "Knowing Now Now Right Now". Probably around the time _he_ started enjoying chewing on Remus's face (though in a less violent sense.)

Just as Sirius is contemplating laying his head on Remus's lap and forcing him to stop working, Peter strolls into the Common Room, looking lighter than air.

"Hullo, chaps!"

"Hullo Petey, what's happening?" Sirius replies cheerfully, grateful for any distraction from the task of not begging Remus for information.

"I," Peter proclaims loudly, "am made of brilliance. I contain neither cells nor organs nor goopy stuff than leaks out on occasion – I am composed of brilliance and, also, a manifest form of amazing. Behold!" he adds, standing tall and flinging his arms outward proudly.

"It shows," Remus says kindly, without looking up.

"Yeah, you're practically glowing. Say, did some lucky bloke put a bun in your oven?" Sirius asks.

Peter frowns, but only for a moment. "No, _thank you_, quite the opposite. I have a date that is guaranteed, as in absolutely without question, to end in sex. Boundless, endless intercourse. As in, and in their Seventh Year, Merlin said, "Let there be shagging," and there was, and it was bloody awesome. Buggering without borders, I'm telling you."

"Good on you, mate. And you're sure she meant sex _with you_? Because that's an easy mistake to make," Sirius offers sagely.

"Yes! She did! I mean, it was implied, alright? Amethestia—"

"The Mantis, you mean?"

"No, I do not—" Peter sighs and rolls his eyes. "That's the one. We're having a highly-illegal picnic on the grounds and… And why am I telling you this exactly?"

"Because you need our Marauderly approval," Sirius says.

"And you have it," Remus says simply, his nose still a half-inch from his parchment.

"What?" Peter and Sirius ask in near-unison.

"Our approval. Marauderly. You have it. Atta' boy, go get her and all that."

"No bug references? No jokes?" Peter says.

"Yeah, what about the intrusive inquiries? You know how I excel at intrusive inquiries, Moony."

"Peter, you like this inse—girl, yeah?" Remus says, finally setting aside his quill.

"Yeah, she's a bit of alright."

"Well then, that's good enough for me." Remus throws Sirius a sidelong glance as he rolls his essay up and tucks it into the mysterious depths of his bag.

"Fine. Bugger the bug," Sirius grumbles. Being mature and non-confrontational is all well and good for Remus, but when it starts to come between a boy and his god given right to give a mate six kinds of hell, well that's when it's gone too far. Sirius crosses his arms and makes a point of being sullen.

"I will, thanks. And what are you two refugees going to do?"

"Oh, we have plans," Remus says simply.

"Plans? As in plans that will end in loss of life, limb, or manhood at the hands of our fair Lady Minerva?"

"I certainly hope not," says Remus.

"I wouldn't know," Sirius can't help but mumble.

"Well, let me know if it gets interesting. I mean, more interesting than—"

"The shagging, the glorious and otherworldly shagging, yeah we know," Sirius says grumpily.

"I'm sure it won't be _that_ interesting, Peter," Remus adds calmly.

Peter sighs contentedly. "How could it be? Alright, well, see you tomorrow then. Don't get castrated without me!" Peter calls as he steps through the portrait.

Sirius frowns. "Did he come all the way up here just to brag about getting laid?"

"Wouldn't you?" Remus asks.

"Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Only I am getting laid, in case you didn't know, and I haven't sent out announcements, have I?"

"Come on," Remus says, ignoring Sirius's prod in the direction of Things That They Have Yet To Discuss.

"Come where?" Sirius asks, though Remus is already halfway to the stairs, making the question superfluous. He trails after. By the time he's made it into the room, Remus has taken off his shirt.

"Alright then, but I you'd better make it quick. James is bound to turn up at the exact wrong moment," Sirius says casually, taking the opportunity to examine Remus's shoulder while he's not looking. The red marks are less raised than they were at first, just after the moon, but they still bother Sirius in a way that he doesn't understand, and he can't help but be extra-nice to them whenever they're face-to-scar.

"Sirius, I hate to shatter your childlike delusions, but nudity does not always directly lead to sex," Remus says, rummaging through his trunk and exhuming a crisp, white shirt.

"Really? Because the theory's always held in my personal experience," Sirius says quite sensibly.

"Put on your shoes," Remus says, kicking Sirius's trainers towards him impatiently and buttoning his shirt.

Sirius considers arguing, but he's never actually seen Remus kick anything, and frankly he's curious to see where he's going with this.

"Should we wait for James to—"

"Do you want to tell James where we're going?" Remus says without looking back.

"Uhm, no?"

"Right. So let's go then." Remus walks to the door and turns, giving Sirius a look that says quite clearly that he should move, right now.

If this goes well, it will be the single most Sirius-like moment of Remus's entire scheming life. If it all goes up in flames, Remus is fairly sure he'll need to look into Durmstrang's transfer policy.

"Are we going to be arrested for this?" Sirius asks casually, sounding curious verging on annoyed. It takes a lot to get Sirius Black on edge, and were he not so bloody irritating once he gets there, Remus would be quite proud of himself.

"No. Probably not," Remus admits. Three more corridors. For the love of Merlin's knobbly knees, if this doesn't live up to Sirius's curiosity – well, Remus doesn't want to consider it.

Maybe it's stupid. Maybe what was perfect and cheekily-romantic in his head is actually disgustingly sentimental and offensive in practice. Maybe he is a great sod for even putting it _into_ practice. Oh god.

Two more corridors.

"You know, I've never actually seen you be mysterious before, Moony. I can't say I like it."

"Yes, you have. For three years, until I told you about the whole man-eating-beast thing."

"No, you weren't mysterious about being a werewolf. You were jumpy and a bit like a scared rabbit at times, but not _mysterious_, I think. It's sort of annoying, if you want to know the truth."

"I don't."

"Well, too bad then," Sirius says sharply. One more stretch of corridor and they will be there, and one way or another Sirius will _have_ to shut up. Remus feels himself speeding up, his legs like pistons of determination, hell bent on seeing this through, even while the rest of his body goes all twisty and unpleasant.

He stops. Sirius thumps into his back and has to catch himself on Remus's shoulders.

"Alright. You can't laugh. You can hit me, if you'd like, but there will be no laughing, Sirius Black Am I understood?"

"Fine, I'm not feeling very amused anyway."

"And if you do hit me, all I ask is that you make sure it's fatal, because I can't live with the, with the – I just _can't_, alright?"

Sirius looks a little frightened and he nods rapidly. It's almost funny. Almost.

* * *

They are standing in front of a long, blank stretch of wall with no noteworthy markings of any kind. Over the years, Sirius has developed a working knowledge of the castle's more obscure hallways, out of necessity mostly, so it's a little worrisome that he's not sure where they are. Remus walks very fast when he's tense, and it's hard to be actively irritated and jog at the same time, and somewhere around the third seemingly-random left turn, Sirius's bearings scampered away. Remus looks like his head is in danger of erupting, leaving some unsuspecting passerby to find their lava-covered corpses, each wearing a perfectly preserved expression of annoyance. Were Sirius not a little irritated with him at the moment, he would kiss Remus and tell him to stop being such a high-strung ponce. As it is, watching Remus squirm is oddly satisfying.

"Give me your hand," Remus says sternly. It's not a request, really, and there's nothing particularly swoon-worthy about his tone, but in the interest of moving things along, Sirius obliges. Remus takes it and presses both of their palms to the wall. There is no dramatic shifting of stones and paint, but in a blink there is a door where no door was.

And it's all frustratingly familiar.

"Open it," Remus says, letting go of Sirius's hand and crossing his arms defensively.

Sirius glances from Remus to the door. If this were James, Sirius would refuse outright, expecting to covered in goo or turned into a giant boil or something. This is not James though, and even at his most cross, Remus is not the type for exploding doors (or so Sirius hopes.)

With what he believes to be imperceptible hesitation, Sirius pulls the big, heavy door open, blinks twice, and accidentally lets it fall shut again. The door disappears instantly.

"This is, isn't it?" He says wonderingly.

"Uhm, yes?" Remus replies, looking like a child in danger of being reprimanded.

"It's the same toilet, isn't it?"

"Well, of course it is. I didn't just pick a random bathroom and—"

Sirius kisses him. The floor is deserted, but had a parade been passing, Sirius would still be kissing him, because he is so amazing when he is not busy driving Sirius mad, and he deserves to be kissed as such.

"I think this may be the first time in the history of man that a toilet has lead to such impassioned snogging," Remus mutters sounding pleasantly befuddled.

"The second time, if you'll remember. Which, apparently, you do."

"Second time. Yes. Right," Remus says, stepping back. "That's why we're here. I mean, this is all very nice, but I did put some time into the interior, and you might consider actually going inside before you scoff at the idea of sleeping in a bathroom."

"Not scoffing, no one's scoffing," Sirius says quickly.

"Put your hand back on the wall."

Sirius does, and when the door reappears he is careful to keep it open long enough to get inside.

It's incredibly upsetting. The last time they were here, there were unknown pathogens on the floor and a lot of vaguely threatening goo that moved when your back was turned, but this, _this_ is a loo of a different colour. There are carpets, for one thing, which there certainly weren't before, and nothing remotely resembling toilet water in sight. The sinks are still there, probably because the castle gets a bit testy when you try to magic away its fixtures (a lesson Sirius learned the hard way when a banister attempted to choke him for stealing it), but they look _nicer_ somehow, like they've had a good scrub and maybe been deloused. The stalls are all in place, and the walls haven't changed, but other than that, it's hardly recognizable as a bathroom. Something tingly explodes in Sirius stomach.

"You've given me a bathroom, Moony," Sirius says in wonderment.

"Yes, I know, I'm sorry. It wasn't such a big deal, but the more excited you got the more pressure there was to make it as good as you wanted it to be and I – the candles are a bit much, I realise, and the wine – not that wine _specifically_, but the existence of wine in the first place – is positively repulsive, and I may as well start padding my bra and join a quilting circle," Remus says, covering his eyes with one hand.

"You did all this? How – when did you do this? I'm with you all the time! In the room, at meals, in the shower half the time – how have you been sneaking off and…" Sirius trails off, suddenly noticing the scent of fruit on the air. "Are there pears in here?"

"I broke curfew. Oh god, I'm a delinquent, I am, and I blame you for that. I snuck out, and I did things, highly illegal things, and I… I gave you a bathroom."

Remus looks like he is torn between smiling and throwing up, and his eyes on Sirius's face make it clear that it all depends on his reaction.

"I think you forgot something," Sirius says carefully.

"My dignity? My manhood?"

"A bed. A cot. Where are we going to sleep?"

"Well, ahh, there are these carpets, and they're soft and… well, are we really going to be sleeping?"

There's not much light, but Remus's cheeks are definitely pink, and his fingers are definitely twitching. Sirius wonders if Remus will always be this way, even when they're seventy and have been shagging the majority of their lives. A small, shameful part of him hopes so.

"Sleep? Who needs sleep? Sleep is for women and children and small, fuzzy creatures," Sirius says, sliding his hands around Remus's waist.

Without invitation, Remus kisses him, hard and urgent, with his whole mouth. They are on a Mobius strip, it seems, of toilets and kissing, and that's _just_ fine.

Within a minute, Remus takes off his shirt. About seven seconds and two kisses later, Sirius takes off his shirt. They're already farther along than they managed the first time they were in this room, and the fact that this time Sirius knows, _knows_, that he isn't insane, and that Remus _is_ in fact worth the obsession and the trouble – worth everything – makes it all the better.

* * *

The problem with bathrooms, even the Taj Mahal of bathrooms, is that they rarely contain windows. Without windows, it is very difficult to keep track of time. Remus used to wear a watch. It was an old muggle deal, with a soft leather strap and a face with an enormous scratch down the centre. Fitting, he'd always thought. His mother gave it to him when he was thirteen after a particularly brutal full moon. She said it had "character," like him. That wasn't why Remus liked it. He wore it because it _worked_. It ticked and tocked and didn't seem to mind that it was flawed and unpretty. It was a good watch, but above all it _was still a watch_, despite the damage. He stopped wearing it shortly after the last time he found himself in this bathroom, and only partially because Sirius said it made him look like a professor.

When Remus wakes up from a sleep he didn't intend to drift off to, he realises that he has no idea what day it is, or how long he has been slouched on the ground with Sirius partially lodged in his spine. The clock has struck twelve, and the carpeting has turned into a pumpkin, and the floor is, once again, slightly sticky. Remus barely notices.

_It's not as though we bloody _invented_ it,_ he thinks. But then when you consider the fact that the modern sink has only been around in its present form for two hundred years, at most, perhaps they _are_ the first two people to have thought of such a thing. Then again, probably not.

So why is it, exactly, that he feels as though they've just landed on Mars? Every time. Must be something hormonal, he decides. Yes, something like that.

"That was... You shouldn't sit like that, crick-up your back," Sirius says, running his fingers across Remus's thigh. Thighs belonging to the male gender are not, in general, particularly sexy, but Remus has always felt that his were significantly less attractive than average. Sirius doesn't seem to notice.

"Oh, hmph," Remus replies absently. His head is tilted at a forty-five degree angle, and one of his legs has gone inexplicably numb, probably from some neurological short-circuit, but it's not the leg that Sirius is stroking, so what's it matter?

"Here," Sirius says, shifting abruptly away.

Remus sits up to keep from falling over and hits his head on the underside of the sink, and then falls over. Headfirst into Sirius's lap.

"Oh god, I, and you are—"

"Somewhat naked, yes," Sirius remarks flatly. He doesn't look bothered, and a flame of envy flickers to life somewhere in Remus's chest that Sirius can just _be_, like this, all exposed and relaxed and, dear god, did he just yawn?

Remus wants his shirt back. His shirt is in the sink above him and there is no way to get at it without standing up, but there is no way to stand up without crawling over Sirius's mostly-naked body, and even if he did manage, it's not as though there are a lot of buttons left on it. So Remus settles for shifting and wiggling himself upright and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Stop that," Sirius says without looking.

"Stop what?"

"You're mustering your dignity, stop mustering."

"I am not 'mustering,' I couldn't muster right now if I tried," Remus says.

"You are! You are the king of all musterers! Look at you, you just straightened your trousers," Sirius nearly shouts, looking outraged.

"Yes, but I didn't button them," Remus replies without making eye contact.

Sirius seems to consider this for a moment and Remus watches him from the corner of his eye. He looks very strange, like a debauched god, but his eyes are too innocent and his face is too young.

"I suppose you didn't. It's just, well, it's that if you start getting all weird and seemly, I'll have to a well, and then we'll have to get up and I don't want to, because I think this is nice, you know? Not that bathroom floors are nice, but this, and you, you're nice. So please, just _be still_," Sirius says, pressing Remus against the wall with one arm across his chest. It's a little awkward, Remus thinks, but then Sirius relaxes and curls his fingers around Remus's waist, so maybe it's alright.

"Fine." And Remus is still. There is a long, patient silence.

"You know we can't go on like this forever," Sirius says carefully. Remus has known for a long time that Sirius does everything carefully. He has rebelled against his breeding in every aspect but this one. What others mistake for thoughtlessness and impulsive immaturity Remus is fairly certain is the results of a brain that can't help but conceive of things from a hundred angles, no matter how hard it tries to change. But it's _never_ this obvious.

Remus feels his heart stop working.

"Oh," he says.

Remus pulls himself out from under the sink and scrambles awkwardly to his feet. Grabbing his shirt from the basin, he suddenly realizes exactly how difficult long sleeves can be when they're turned inside out and rolled up. It's like tunnel vision, the agonizing concentration of fumbling fingers and wrinkled fabric.

"What are you doing?" Sirius asks, looking up at him from beneath thick, black fringe.

"I'm putting on my shirt, Sirius. And then I am going back to the tower and taking my shirt back off and getting into bed for a very long time, which makes me question the futility of putting it on in the first place, but such is life," Remus says, managing to get one sleeve untangled.

"What, why are you, we were basking and now you've gone all weird and I'm a bit confused, Moony, I really am."

Remus sets his other sleeve to rights and starts to pull on his shirt, backwards at first and then slowly, the sweaty stickiness of his skin making the fabric cling.

"It seems to me that everything is perfectly clear. Crystal, actually."

"Christ, Remus, could you run out on me a little faster?"

"Me? I'm the one running out now, am I?"

"I have—I want just, just to consider for a second what it is we're doing and you, and you won't even talk about it!"

Remus rounds on him. His face feels like it's on fire, and his eyes are burning. He's so angry he's afraid he might cry, or punch Sirius in the jaw, and he can't decide which would be worse. Except that it's not _just_ anger, because he gets the distinct feeling that punching Sirius wouldn't make him feel any better.

"Alright, fine! Let's talk. _I_ was under the impression that we were getting better at this. We just, we _just_ got our footing and I thought we were fine except for now I'm beginning to think that I was a moron for thinking your toddler's attention span didn't apply to me."

Sirius tilts his head to one side like a baffled puppy. "Moony, I think we are not communicating properly. You speak Remus, a language full of allusions and words like "antimacassar." I speak Sirius, which is mostly grunts and pointing, but I like to think it gets the point across the majority of the time. But I think, I _think_ that something is being lost in translation here."

"And what is that, exactly?"

"That I think I rather love you, you great sod."

Remus takes a step back. Then he's not sure what to do, so he takes a step forward. He realises, of course, that he is getting nowhere, both literally and mentally, but as long as he's not doing anything he can't exactly be doing the wrong thing. He takes another step back.

"Are you – is this some sort of jig you're doing? It's very nice," Sirius says, looking a little lost.

"No, I," Remus says, rushing forward on the power of his own lunacy and kneeling in front of Sirius. "Sirius, I am very, _very_ confused. I was under the impression – and then you said – you did _say_, right?"

"Yes, I think I did. Yes," Sirius says.

"Ok. Well. Ok. Then what's all this about not wanting to keep going and – what did you say again?"

"I said – well, I didn't say, but I _meant _that I… I think we should tell Prongs," Sirius says cautiously.

Remus feels himself sit down. "You think that?"

"I… Yes."

"You have uhm… met James, yes?"

"Once, at a function or something. Terribly charming bloke, stupid hair though."

"And you think he'll just – _what_ exactly?"

"I think he'll have a conniption. I think he'll probably start talking very fast and high-pitched and at worst he'll punch me."

"Why you? Why not me?" Remus asks.

"Because, _obviously_, I seduced you."

"Hey, I'm not some swooning damsel that's fallen into your evil clutches."

"Ah, but you are. Or you will be, in James's mind, anyway. But, but I don't know, I think he'll get over it. And imagine how much easier it'll be if we don't have to sneak around in our own dormitory."

"But it's only our dorm for another month. Couldn't we just wait and… Never tell anyone?"

"Is that what you want?"

"Is what?"

"Do you never want anyone to know?" Sirius asks. He looks like he does when he is waiting to hear how long he'll be in detention for his latest prank.

"I… I don't know? I," Remus pauses. It's hard to think with dog-eyes on his face, waiting, watching. "I don't know?" He adds honestly.

"Right. Well, I do. I feel like your dirty little secret, which is saying quite a lot considering you own two copies of Jane Eyre and are, actually, a werewolf. It's a competitive field."

"Jane Eyre is a classic."

"Not when you wank to it. You're missing the point. Or maybe I don't have a point," Sirius ruffles his hair in a manner oddly reminiscent of James.

"No, you have a point. Or there _is_ a point, anyway, whether you have a grasp on it or not." Remus sighs. He wishes he were wearing clean trousers. He's always found that clean trousers lead to better thinking. "Can we maybe discuss this, you know, not in a loo?"

Sirius chuckles. "Ah, have we finally found something your dignity won't allow you to do in a toilet? Because I'd have thought it would be that thing with your tongue and my—"

"Get dressed," Remus cuts in, throwing Sirius's shirt onto his head like a large, wrinkled tent.

"No need to get violent," the tent pole says.

It takes a few minutes of fumbling and misplaced socks for them to get dressed, but they both more or less manage it. Remus is pretty sure he had a Sickle in his pocket when he came in, but it's probably rolled into some dark, dank corner that he really does not care to explore. Sirius fits his hand to the back of Remus's neck, and in a moment of startling coordination, kisses him soundly on the mouth as Remus pushes the door open.

Peter stares at them with eyes like large, watery dinner plates.

"Hullo," Remus hears someone say. With a jolt of horror he thinks it might have been him.

"Uhm. Good morning?" Peter ventures.

"A good morning it is," Sirius says, sounding chipper and like someone Remus really, really wants to kill.

"Did you two have a good night – I mean. Oh shite," Peter says, looking at the doorframe with intense interest.

"Yes! A good night. And a good morning. As I've just said. Previously," Sirius says.

"Peter…" Remus begins. It occurs to him a moment too late that nothing he could possibly say at this point will excuse Sirius's mouth on his face and their utter failure to play it off as anything less incriminating, if such a word can be applied.

"I'm going to bed," Peter announces abruptly, his voice a little too loud.

"Righto, Pete. See you later then," Sirius adds, giving Peter's already retreating figure a half-wave.

Remus hears himself say, "Oh. My god."

"Well. I'd say that settles a few things," Sirius says, clapping him firmly on the shoulder.


	14. Revealing Things

**So. I am so sorry that updates have been less-than-consistent. I can't make any promises, but I hope to have the next installment up by the end of next week. Thank you to everyone who has checked in, checked up on me, fretted, worried, and generally expressed a desire to see this series continue. If it were not for you all and your lovely words of encouragement, I'm not sure I would have had the heart to keep going. You are all incredibly cool.**

**Also, I am _so_ rusty.  
**

* * *

"Is this what dying feels like?" Remus asks, staring at his own hands with wonderment, as though they might suddenly appear translucent and ethereal.

Sirius isn't sure what to say, really. It's not hard to fathom where Remus might get such an impression – Sirius himself feels a bit floatier than usual – but the echoing thrump-thrump-thrump of his extremely living heart begs to differ. Begs and screams and makes his head feel too-full with blood.

"I think you'll pull through," Sirius says. His voice is holding together remarkably well, he's pleased to note. It's crucial at the moment, sounding unaffected. It's crucial because he's afraid that if he lets himself shriek with horror and curl into a tiny ball of trembling humiliation, Remus will follow suit, and then nothing will get done.

Which raises the question of what there is to do. All joking aside, the idea of chasing Peter down and wiping the last several minutes from his memory (forcibly, if necessary) is not without merit. Or appeal. But this, the people knowing and whatnot, it's what he'd wanted, or thought he'd wanted, or tried very hard to convince Remus he wanted. At any rate, the part of Sirius that makes his mouth form words seemed highly enthusiastic about the idea a little while ago, so performing the magical equivalent of a good brain-bleaching on one of his best mates doesn't seem like a valid course of action.

"So what do we do?" Remus asks, eerily echoing Sirius's thoughts.

"We could kill him?"

Remus appears to consider this for a moment, much to Sirius's amusement, before shaking his head. "No, no. It's not Peter's fault. I'm sure it wasn't a terribly positive moment for him, either."

"Actually, Moony, in point of fact, bearing witness to the passion of Sirius Black is said to be one of the finest experiences a man can have."

Remus raises an eyebrow, but doesn't take the obvious jab, for which Sirius is grateful.

"We should probably, you know," Sirius says, gesturing towards the empty corridor down which Peter so recently fled.

"Actually," Remus says, sounding at last like someone not about to pass out, "the Tower's the other way. I don't know _where_ Peter's run off to." A hint of a smile pulls at the edge of Remus's lips, and all at once, like falling through a pensieve, Sirius remembers why he was so keen on telling bloody anyone who'll listen that yes, he does in fact enjoy sucking werewolf face, and yes, they should be absurdly jealous. "Should we erh… find him?" Remus adds hesitantly.

Sirius considers this a moment, then says, "Probably not," and tugs Remus towards Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

"Whassurphrmp?" James mutters, rolling towards the edge of the bed in an impressive tangle of sheets and limbs.

"Oh god, Potter, we've overslept," Lily says, clutching a pillow to her nearly-naked chest.

"_Lace_, Evans? I'd never have thought," Sirius says, apparently unable to take his eyes off the strap of Lily's very red, absurdly lacy bra.

"Shove off, Padfoot. Have some decency," James grumbles, gingerly removing Lily's blouse from atop his bedside lamp.

"I'm _trying_ to, actually," Sirius says.

"Well go try someplace else!" James shouts, hitting Sirius squarely in the mouth with Lily's recently discarded pillow.

Remus is certain he should intervene, but so long as no one else in the room has noticed that his vocal chords are not entirely functional, he doesn't feel the need to point it out.

"Alright, Potter, you can punish the children as soon as I have my skirt," Lily says, standing up with the bedsheet wrapped firmly around her waist. She has a grace about her that is, it seems, inherent to women under great strain, and those who are missing large portions of their ensembles.

Remus notices her skirt hanging from his bedpost and hands it to her, gingerly, without comment.

"Thank you, Lupin. You're a good man," she says sincerely, and all Remus can do is stare resolutely past her and nod.

"Hold on a moment, just let me find my trousers and we can have breakfast while Sirius is—" James gives Sirius a look of consideration, "twitching… Or whatever he's doing. Maybe Pete's about and we can—"

"No," Remus says, only he realises that he's not the only one who's said it. Sirius looks, not for the first time this morning, like he isn't sure what to do with his hands, so he keeps rubbing them together like a mad scientist.

"No?" James asks tentatively.

Sirius glances at Remus desperately. "No, you have to stay up here?"

"I have to stay up here. Why do I have to—"

"It's about Peter. He's erh… It's about Peter, alright? What kind of best mate are you, anyway?" Sirius asks, making it sound like some great test of Marauderly virtue.

James stares at Sirius for a moment, waiting for him to blink, but Sirius, to his credit, gives nothing away. "Alright, then," James says at length. "I'll catch up with you later," he adds for Lily's benefit.

"You're all a bunch of nutters, you know that? Well, maybe not you, Remus, but you do put up with them, so there must be something off about you as well," Lily says, straightening her shirt and making for the door.

"Yes. Something very _off_," Remus muses numbly.

* * *

James Potter is known for many things. He's Sirius Black's best mate in the whole bleeding world, for one thing, and he's a Quidditch legend in the making, and he's ace at defence spells, and he's Lily Evan's knight in shining (if slightly crooked, yet still sometimes effective when he's not being a prat) armour. He is not, however, known for his aptitude at handling delicate situations of the interpersonal variety. Fortunately, being a teenage boy does not usually entail the handing of delicate situations, so much as the handling of situations that may end in loss of limb or pregnancy, so James has done alright.

Until now.

"Sit down," Remus says quietly. He's using his best Professor voice, the one they tease him about, the one Sirius teases him about privately until Remus uses that same voice to dole out commands that will definitely _not_ be on the NEWT. James, bless the little sod, does as he's told for once in his life, and plops on his sheet-less bed with a look of anticipation.

"Has Peter died?" James asks.

"No. No, not that we're aware of," Remus says, looking a little guilty.

And then there is a silence. Only it is not a silence, because Sirius is sure that everyone in Gryffindor Tower can hear his heart beating like a thousand angry drums, and the sticky, dry sound of his throat as he tries to swallow the furry creature that has died in his oesophagus. James glances back and forth between them, like a child expecting to hear that Fiddo has gone to live on a lovely estate in Scotland.

Sirius clears his throat and opens his mouth in hopes that he will throw up and thus ease the tension.

"James…" Remus begins, but seems to lose his place.

"Peter saw me… ahem," Sirius pauses and braces himself, like he's about to fling himself off a cliff. "He saw me kiss Moony, alright?"

James blinks, all doe-eyed innocence. "So?"

"So?" Remus repeats with an expression of deepest confusion.

"I'm sorry, Remus, but I'd have thought you'd be used to it by now. One of the hazards of being friends with a great mutt, I suppose. He kissed me the other day, full on the mouth, after I caught the snitch against Slytherin." James subconsciously wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"You did what now?" Remus asks, turning on Sirius.

"_Not_ the time," Sirius mutters. "Prongs, mate, love of my life. Moony didn't make Snivellus cry immediately beforehand."

"What did he do then?" James asks.

"Oh bugger. Look, it wasn't that kind of kiss, exactly. It was more along the lines of… It wasn't a—a oh god." Sirius presses two fingers into his eye-socket, hoping the pain will distract him.

"James," Remus says, sounding patient and wise, which he frequently is, "when you kiss Lily, that's different from the way Sirius kisses, well, everyone _apparently_, isn't it?"

"Sure, it's not all slobbery and—"

"Excuse me?" Sirius blurts out. "I do not _slobber_."

"You do, but that's not the point," Remus ploughs onward, heedless of Sirius's look of deep, abiding offence, which he has every intention of mentioning once they are no longer in mixed-and-likely-to-become-violent company. "But the _meaning_, it's not the same."

"Uhuh…" James nods slightly, looking confused.

"Well, the _kiss_," Remus says, the word seeming to stick in his throat, "That Peter… happened upon was somewhat similar in meaning to well, to when you kiss Lily. I think. Maybe."

Sirius watches Remus struggle to keep talking and James struggle to understand, and it's just too much. He's a fucking Marauder, for fuck's sake, and this is not how Marauders have Manly and Meaningful conversations, damn it.

"Prongs, Moony and I are—" vomit? No. He pushes through. "Together. And not in the 'in the same vicinity' sense. Got it?" The way he says it, it's less like words and more like verbal projectiles, but at least it's out there.

"You're what now?"

"Potter, do _not_ make me say it again," Sirius barks firmly.

Remus has quietly turned green and shrunk back a few steps. "So…" He squeaks.

"You two. Are," James appears at a loss for words, which is sort of a first, aside from instances involving a certain willowy redhead.

"Yes. That's, you know, true," says Sirius, nodding a little too emphatically.

"Oh christ," James says, looking panicked.

"Now, James, it's not—" Remus starts.

"Peter!" James fairly shouts.

"What?" Sirius and Remus ask at almost the same moment.

"Where the hell is he?"

"He's, I don't know, he's about?" Sirius offers unhelpfully.

"You didn't go after him?"

"Well, no, Prongs, we felt that the pair of us hunting him down like the shirtlifter death squad might not be the best thing for him."

James scrubs his hand across his face. "Yeah, alright, you're probably right. I'll find him."

Sirius suddenly feels a little anxious. "So you don't want to, you know, thump me or throw up in my hair or… or anything? Before you go?"

James pauses a moment and seems to consider the offer. "No… No, not just now."

Remus looks very confused, and Sirius wishes he could reassure him that this is just one of those stupid teenager things that Remus has always been far and away too grown-up to understand. "Later, then?" He asks pleasantly.

"No, look. It's not that you don't deserve it for being such an enormous twat about everything, but, I don't know. It doesn't really matter, does it? I didn't know and everything was the same as always, and now I know and, well, you're still bloody irritating and Moony still looks horrified that he talks to us, so what's it matter?"

"It… doesn't?" Sirius ventures half-relieved, half-confused.

"Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to listen to you go on about your sex life or any of that bollocks, and I'm not going to quit calling you a giant pure-blood poufter, because it's true no matter who you're shagging but… Look, if this conversation goes on any longer, we're all going to grow breasts."

"You're right. But I just want you to know," Sirius says sincerely, "That you'll always be my best girl."

James smiles momentarily then smacks him in the head.

"We can talk or something later, but Peter needs finding," James says suddenly.

"Fine, go be his prince charming. I won't be jealous. I'll just stay here and ravish Moony within an inch of his life," Sirius says, slinging his arm around Remus's waist and pulling him close. It's pretty clear that Remus only allows this out of shock, like a frightened, woodland creature going limp in the jaws of a predator.

James' entire face seems to shrink inward in a manner that should be physically impossible. "That. Is not. Funny, Padfoot," he says calmly, before turning on his heel and marching off to find their fallen and probably deeply traumatised comrade.

* * *

"Where do you get those things?" Remus asks as Sirius lights a fag with the tip of his wand.

"Same place Snivelly got his bollocks, the _black market_," Sirius says, making dramatic, spooky fingers.

"Well, could you please not? It makes you smell like burning dog, which is not as irresistible as you might imagine."

Sirius glares at him a moment, as though weighing the value of Remus's company against the all-consuming pleasure of smoking. Eventually, he stubs it out, huffily.

"I'm too good to you," he says with an air of someone making a great and terrible sacrifice.

"Yes, I suppose you rather are," Remus replies, leaning into Sirius's body, coaxing him nearer in order to kiss him.

After a long and happy silence, Sirius pulls away but an inch and mutters, "Actually, I'm not. Not by a long-shot."

It is in these moments, rare and raw, that Remus is reminded of exactly what he is dealing with: a boy-nearly-man with no family and no clear future, who is so fiercely and idiotically brave at times, yet scared of the darkened doorways at night and of growing up. He is like a child, which is not necessarily how Remus prefers to think of him, considering the fact that they participate in an assortment of rather un-childlike activities with one another. But it's evident in the way he is so protective of Remus, like a child cradling a coveted toy—but not _just_ like that. It's more. It's always more, with Sirius.

He holds onto Remus like a life-preserver, which is utterly ridiculous, Remus believes, considering how much stronger Sirius is than even he understands, probably. It's evident in the way his fingers twitch against Remus's skin, clutching, grasping, pressing, at once happy and never content.

"D'you think Pete's forgiven us yet?" Sirius asks, shifting away but leaving his hand on Remus's thigh.

"I… Don't know. I don't think you have to worry, though. Honestly, he seemed a lot more angry with me than you," Remus says thoughtfully.

"Angry with you? Who could be angry with you? You're Moony! You're like Canada."

"Cold and full of French people?" Remus says, smiling.

"I certainly hope not."

Remus lets it go, but deep down he knows that this won't be the end of it. When they'd found Peter in the Great Hall, he'd already eaten what appeared to be an entire family of chickens, though there were few remains upon which to speculate. Peter had smiled and laughed and taken it all nearly as well as James (probably _because_ of James, actually), but there'd been something in the corner of his eye when he looked at Remus—betrayal or resentment or some mixture of the two. And Remus can't blame him, exactly. He and Peter have always been the slightly-less-dashing duo, and it's not unreasonable to assume that Peter considers not getting laid vital to this status.

Abandonment—perhaps that's what it is. Only Remus thinks it's absurd because he can snog Sirius all the live long day and still feel like a walking faux pas. He's just that good at it. It's got nothing to do with who does or does not like to remove his clothing at inappropriate times. In fact, in some ways, spending large portions of his life inches away from Sirius's head has made him even more acutely aware of how closely he resembles someone's doddering maiden aunt. Because really, what boy of eighteen spends his time worrying that his healthy and capable best-friend-cum-significant-other is going to die of Malaria or be struck dead by a meteorite?

Remus feels certain that when he explains this to Peter later (perhaps in less humiliating terms) it will all be fine, but until then he has to bear the knowledge that Peter does not particularly like him at the moment, which bothers Remus rather a lot.

"Hey, Moony," Sirius says.

Remus realises he has been staring at a nondescript bit of gutter for some time now. "Yes? Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Sirius sighs. "I hate it when you're 'sorry.' Just be… _here_. Ok?"

"Right," Remus blinks embarrassedly. "Here. I am."

Sirius inspects him for a moment then takes Remus's hand in his own. "There. There you are. Hello," he says, smiling.

"Hello," Remus replies serenely. Sometimes, when he wants to, Sirius has these _eyes_ that are strange and familiar all at once. It happens when they are… Well, distracted, sometimes, and sometimes it happens for no reason at all, or at least no reason that Remus can fathom.

When Sirius presses into him this time, Remus presses back.

When their mouths find each other, it is with purpose and poise—neither hurried or hesitant. Sirius's mouth tastes like ash and dirt, which is not as unpleasant as Remus would have him believe. Mostly, he doesn't like it when Sirius smokes because he thinks like his mother and can only imagine the disturbing state of Sirius's lungs. But secretly, privately, he doesn't hate the way it makes the lines of Sirius's mouth go all strong and solemn, or the way it makes him look like some tortured runaway poet god.

Amidst the pressing and pulling, they end up sprawled against the stone rooftop, curled close on their sides. The roof is rough and cool beneath Remus's palm as he tries to gain enough leverage to roll himself on top, but Sirius shows no sign of yielding. One deft hand tugs Remus's shirt over his head, and when he reaches to reciprocate, Remus is pleasantly surprised to note that there's no need. So he reaches for Sirius's flies instead.

Somewhere, in the half-full moonlight of a warm English evening, Remus loses his ability to worry.


	15. Things That End & Things That Do Not

**This will be the last installment of this series. I hope that you all have enjoyed reading it as thoroughly as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you so much for coming along with me on this unexpected journey, in which the little one-shot that could turned into the longest running anything that I've ever written.  
Have I mentioned how much I love you all?**

**Also, I apologize in advance for any excessive typos-- I had some serious computer issues, and had to re-edit at the eleventh hour. Ack.  
**

**

* * *

**_11 June 1977_

_Seventh Year_

"Alright, gentlemen. I trust I need not remind you of how important this is."

"No sir, commander," Sirius says, only half-jokingly. James really does look authoritative, and it makes Sirius's heart swell fondly to think about all the times they've sat in this same cupboard, the one behind the statue of the old witch with an eye-patch, in this same circle. When they were eleven, it felt more natural. Now, their knees bump because there's not enough room, and the low-hanging shelf forces them to hunch over a little, but that's not important. It's tradition.

Sirius was raised on tradition. It was shoved into his every orifice from the time he could understand words like Honour and Bloodline, which, in the Black household, was a lot younger than one might expect. Tradition was inheriting his father's sword when he turned ten, just like Family was sitting at a banquet table and having strangers with his same ears and cheekbones tell him how fine he looked in his new robes, just like Love was Blood, and Blood was everything. Tradition was something he was taught, a dry and dusty concept that held little interest for a boy who preferred things that could be touched and gnawed on and blow to bits.

Then he met James.

James knew about Tradition, too. He knew his family tree and which fork to use and how to charm the pants off of old ladies, of course, but he also knew about his mum's treacle tart that she made every Christmas, and about waking up early on the last day of summer to watch the sunrise with his dad. He knew Tradition was family, and family was love, and love was everything.

So, Sirius learned to embrace a different sort of tradition. This new tradition involved exploding birthday cakes and drunken new years and, yes, dusty cupboards full of boys and brooms.

"So how do we, er… release it into the wild?" Remus asks.

His hair is at strange and interesting angles, because he insisted on going to bed before getting up and _behaving like a hoodlum in the name of nostalgia_, as he put it. Sirius has the faint urge to smooth it down, but Peter's developed this odd sort of cough that acts up every time Remus and Sirius come into contact with one another, and there's no sense in aggravating his condition at a time like this.

"Ah, a fair question, my dear Moony," James says, unfurling the map into the centre of the circle. "If my estimations are correct—and they should be, since I put the protective spells on the damn thing—we just have to tap it, like we always do, but all at the same time, and it should… deactivate. We shall need but our wands and our wits."  
James brandishes his wand and glances around at them, expectantly. There is a moment of quiet confusion in which no one moves.

"Alright, I see we've left our wits at home. Our wands then," James says.

"That's it?" Peter asks, and it's clear he speaks for them all.

"Yes, that's it. What did you expect, a human sacrifice and a bloody druid chant?" James asks.

"No, it's just. It just seems so… practical. That's all," Remus says kindly.

James's brow furrows. "Well, I suppose we could… I don't know. We could dance naked around it first or something?" he suggests half-heartedly.

"No, no, that won't be necessary," Remus adds hastily.

"Alright then!" James says. "Does anyone else have a problem, or can we do this already? My neck is bent all wrong and Peter's got his knee in my spleen."

"Right," they mutter in delayed unison, brandishing their wands.

With some hesitation, they touch the tips of their wands to the already yellowing parchment. All eyes are on James, and James is staring at Sirius, and Sirius just knows that if he says "No" or "Stop" or "I've changed my mind, let's go light Dumbledore's beard on fire so we can't leave," that James will not go along with him this time. So he says nothing. He nods once, and James smiles.

"On three, then," James says quietly. The door has four varyingly effective silencing spells on it, so there's no real reason to whisper, except that the moment demands it.

"One," James says.

"Two," Sirius says.

"Three," James whispers back.

Four hushed voices say _mischief managed_. The sound echoes off the stone walls and creeps beneath their skin with tingly importance, memories in the making.

For a moment, nothing happens. The Map looks as it always has, scarlet and blooming and intricate. But then there is a furling and a shrinking, and the words and places and people that have been their lives, lo these seven years, slide sickeningly to the centre of the parchment and dwindle to nothingness.

"Well," Sirius says after a while, "that was…"

"That was," Remus throws in.

"Anticlimactic," Peter adds, and they all nod.

"It… was, wasn't it?" James admits. For a moment, his disappointed face looks like it did when he was eleven, and it makes Sirius's chest feel odd and tight.

"And it's, you know, dead now, is it?" Peter asks.

"Never again shall it manage mischief," Remus says solemnly.

Sirius knows that Remus does not understand all the fuss, and that he'd probably prefer to be asleep right now, which is why Sirius is so fiercely and intensely grateful that he is here in all his mature and unsentimental glory. Remus, Sirius believes, cannot appreciate Tradition the way that he and James do. For one thing, Remus's family doesn't have a crest or a motto, or an enormous vault at Gringotts for that matter, and Sirius correctly assumes that Remus never received anything large and unnecessary for his birthday (like a sword, or a throne) because Tradition dictated it. Then there's the fact that the moon is a repetitive old hag, making Tradition, along with routine and regularity, a word of which Remus is none too fond. Still, he sits beside Sirius, un-indulgently, because he can see when things are greater than himself.

Perhaps he understands Tradition after all

* * *

_1 September 1971_

_First Year_

"Budge up, chicken legs, that's my bed."

To his credit, Remus only hits his head once as he scrambles out from under his newly selected and, it seems, newly lost bed. Meeting new people has never been Remus's favourite pastime, what with the awkward handshakes and oh-my-what's-that-on-your-face? conversations that having four years' worth of scars tends to necessitate. What's more, he doesn't particularly enjoy having them with his head beneath a bed and his arse in the air, nor with a large, unfortunate butterbeer stain across the front of his trousers owing to his own apparent inability to drink and breathe at the same time in stressful situations, like his first meal in the Great Hall, for instance.

"Oh. Oh, it is? I sort of thought—well, they made it seem as though we ought to just… claim one," Remus ventures, scrambling to his feet. The boy is almost a head taller than Remus, and he has a face made for portraits and possibly currency.

"In that case, I am claiming this bed," the boy says, slinging his trunk onto the neatly-made bed, throwing its blankets into disarray.

"But, but I've claimed it," Remus argues. He can feel his ears turning pink, and just whose idea was it anyway to make blushing so embarrassing and yet have it happen primarily when you're already humiliated?

"Do you have a flag?" the boy asks casually, already beginning to rummage through his trunk. An ancient looking amulet falls out and Remus wonders briefly whether it's worth more than his house.

"Well, no, not as such but—"

"What kind of Englishman are you? If you're going to conquer anything, you'd best have a flag to back it up," he says. A pocket watch and a flask containing Merlin knows what tumble onto the bed. The watch lands precariously near the edge, but the boy makes no effort to save it. He must come from old money, Remus decides, to be so unaware of how wealthy he is.

"And you do? Have a flag, that is," Remus says. He's being assertive, just like his mother told him.

"I do at that," the boy says, brandishing a rather unattractive pair of pants—green with some sort of itchy looking silver thread running through the fabric—and hanging them from the nearest bedpost.

"I didn't know they were accepting underpants as diplomatic symbols. The Queen will be thrilled," Remus mutters irritably.

The boy straightens up and all at once the air goes very still.

"Look, I'm sure you and this bed have a lovely report, but I've just had, in all seriousness, the most unfortunate day in the history of days, and I would really appreciate it if you didn't make me hex you before I know your name."

He says this all with perfect, steely calm. Remus would shudder, were he that type.

"Remus," Remus says.

"What?" asks the boy exasperatedly.

"Remus. My name. Remus Lupin."

The boy squints at him for a moment, probably considering whether Remus is worth the trouble of hexing. Abruptly, he turns back to his things.

"Sirius Black. Yes, that sort of Black. I don't suppose you're from one of the families?"

It takes Remus longer than it should to figure out what he means.

"No. Er, not really. My dad's muggleborn."

For a split-second, he thinks he sees Sirius flinch at this, an almost imperceptible straightening of his spine, but the next moment he's sure he imagined it.

"I like being able to see the sky, y'know? At night. S'sort of like the ocean—goes on forever and everyone sees the same one. And this bed," Sirius says, patting it affectionately, "this bed has got the best view."

Remus nods, then realises that Sirius can't see him and adds a sort of affirmative grunt. Remus likes to see the sky, too, only for different reasons. He tracks the moon in its many forms and stares at it whenever he feels too sad or too happy. It reminds him that he is not responsible for either state, and that it's all up to a giant grey rock a million miles away. He wonders if he would still be a werewolf were the moon to blow up or fall apart, or whatever it is that happens to moons when they die. He wonders what this aristocratic brat would do if he knew he was sharing a room with a monster.

With careful coordination, Remus eases his bag—scuffed brown leather, his grandfather's during the war—out from under the bed and tosses it onto the next bed over. It's not so bad, really, and he can still see the window, he'll just have to learn to look past this Sirius fellow.

"You're pluckier than you look, you know," Sirius says suddenly. "Not that that's saying much." Something about his voice, the crisp, elegant tone, makes everything he says sound profoundly interesting. Remus wonders whether he realises this.

"I'm sorry?" Remus asks.

"You look a bit… squishy, as it were. But _I_ know better," Sirius says. He hauls his trunk to the foot of the bed, dropping it on the floor with a heavy _thump._

"You do?" Remus says. He feels incredibly dull, unable to think of anything remotely conversational to say to this person, who, it seems, is attempting to converse with him, against all logic.

"Yeah. You've got good scars," Sirius says matter-of-factly.

Remus doesn't know what to say to that, exactly. He's never heard anyone speak as though they were a connoisseur of scars, and he's not quite sure he likes it.

"I didn't know there was such a thing," Remus says, calmly unzipping his bag.

"Sure there is. You can always tell when someone's got a burn on their hand from touching the kettle when their mum's told them not to, versus when someone's got a set of nasty gashes from something worth getting hurt over. And yours," Sirius says, eyeing Remus's eyebrow and the faint, flesh-colour line connecting it to his hairline, "are definitely the latter."

Sirius's eyes are very grey, Remus notices. He imagines that they're looking directly into his brain, and he shudders, unbidden. It's absurd, of course, and no one could possibly know by looking where his scars came from, but Remus imagines that if anyone could, it would be this boy.

"I hate to disappoint," Remus says, with practiced nonchalance, "but I fell head first into a pile of rocks when I was eight. Hardly a story worth telling."

Sirius huffs and flops down on his bed, disinterestedly. Remus breathes a sigh of relief. He's consistently startled by how quick people are to accept the lies he constantly spews. He has an honest face, he's been told. He's always found this funny, since he imagines he tells more lies than anyone he knows. It's remarkable how closely an honest man resembles a practiced liar.

"Bloody aggressive rocks," he thinks he hears Sirius mutter.

Before Remus can think of a response, let alone force his mouth to start working again, the door bursts open with a _bang_ and a brilliant flash of light.

"What the—" Sirius yells.

When the light fades back to normal, a lanky chap with unfortunate hair stumbles through the door and says, cheerfully, "hallo!"

Behind him there stands a shorter, dumpier boy in a lumpy sweater. It's far too warm for a sweater this time of year, even at night, so Remus imagines his mother had insisted.

"I remember you," Sirius says, suspiciously. "You almost got expelled earlier."

The boy with the ridiculous hair grabs his bag from beside the door, where all their bags had been haphazardly stacked by some unknown help, and appraises the two remaining beds with immense interest.

"Before entering the castle," the boy says. He turns to Sirius and flashes a smile. "It's a new record," he adds proudly.

For a moment, Remus wonders if Sirius will threaten to hex this person, too, but then, much to Remus's surprise, Sirius returns the boy's enthusiasm with an even more dazzling smile of his own.

"Brilliant," Sirius says.

"James Potter," the boy says, extending his hand in Sirius's direction.

Sirius stands up in one fluid motion and walks over to James, appraisingly.

"Sirius Black," he says, taking James's hand.

James expression changes almost imperceptibly. "Black?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

"That's right," Sirius says, straightening to his full height—almost as tall as James.

Remus gets the feeling that he could begin to cluck like a chicken and no one would notice. Well, perhaps the lad in the sweater might.

James seems to consider this a moment. "How'd you end up in here?" he asks.

"No idea, mate," Sirius says, like he's admitting to something scandalous.

"Well, you must have done something right," says James.

"That, or the gods are twisted old bastards," Sirius replies, a tart smile tugging at his mouth.

"So's Dumbledore, from what I've heard," James says.

Sirius laughs, and Remus releases a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. The boy with the sweater seems to sag with relief, as well. Remus shoots him a sympathetic look.

"Hello, who are you?" James asks.

Suddenly, as though someone has pointed a spotlight at him, Remus grows horrifically aware that he is being addressed.

"Remus Lupin," Remus says. He hopes that the fewer words he says, the less likely he is to say the wrong thing.

"From Dorchester?" the boy with the sweater chimes in.

"Err, no. Leeds," Remus replies.

"Oh. My, uhm. My mum has a friend named Lupin. From Dorchester," the boy says.

"This is Peter," James says, heaving his bag onto the bed opposite Sirius's. "He's alright," he adds, without explanation.

"Charmed," Sirius says, stretching back out on his bed.

"Nice to meet you Peter, uhh," Remus prompts.

"Pettigrew," Peter says, eyeing the remaining bed suspiciously.

"Right," Remus mumbles.

Peter peals off his sweater and throws it, a little aggressively, onto his bed, before proceeding to dump the contents of his trunk. They've each been given bedside tables with drawers that are far too large to exist without the help of magic, and Remus correctly assumes they're to put their clothing in them. Remus quickly realises that he only has enough to fill the first two drawers, so he uses the remaining drawer to house his books. He's brought quite a few of them. He told his parents that he needed them all for his studies, but several of the dusty volumes had come along only because he couldn't bear to leave them behind.

"What's all this then?" A voice says over Remus's shoulder.

Sirius is lying across Remus's bed on his stomach, his head less than a foot from where Remus has knelt to unpack.

"Books, mostly."

"Are you planning to found a library later? Because I hate to be the bearer of ill tidings, but I think they already have one here."

"No, I just. I like them," Remus admits.

Sirius scrunches his face, momentarily upsetting the aristocratic line of his brow, making him look mortal.

"Are you certain you weren't meant to be in Ravenclaw?"

Remus smiles. "No, I'm not certain at all."

"But you trust that musty old hat, do you?" Sirius asks. His eyes flash with a sort of steely intensity that eleven-year-olds ought not be able to muster.

"Of course. It's been around a lot longer than I have, it ought to know what it's doing by now," says Remus, sounding, he is pleased to note, far more confident than he feels.

Sirius squints at him for a moment, and Remus gets that odd, eyes-on-his-brain feeling again. He hopes that he isn't blushing.

"Right-o," says Sirius, rolling gracefully to his feet.

Remus blinks at him, wearily. It's going to be a very long year.

* * *

_14 June 1977_

"Uhoh," James says quietly.

Generally, when a Marauder says "uhoh," it's a fair bet that something is about to explode, fall apart, become violently ill, or hit the proverbial fan. The volume of said exclamation is, usually, inversely proportionate to the level of alarm it ought to cause. When a Marauder says "uhoh" as softly as James has just said "uhoh," it is advisable to take cover, or, at the very least, offer the Marauder in question an empty bowl and a damp flannel.

"What is it?" Remus asks with barely-concealed panic.

"There's something… amiss over here with our girl," James says, gesturing for them to come closer, though no one is particularly keen to do so.

James has been hunched over his desk for the past twenty minutes, which should have been the first sign of trouble.

"What's this then?" Sirius says pleasantly, leaning against the desk as casually as possible. He's quite good at casual.

"She's err—It's… talking to me. At me. It's talking," James says, pushing The Map towards Sirius.

Indeed, there are thick, elegant lines of scarlet scrawl all over the parchment's surface.

"'Mister Wormtail politely requests that you cease prodding things that have no need of prodding,'" Remus reads aloud.

"I said what?" Peter asks, loosening his tie and closing the dormitory door behind him.

"You said something rather rude, and I don't like it," Sirius says, smiling irrepressibly. Something is happening, he can feel it. The magic in his blood is singing so tangibly that he wonders whether he might be causing this to happen, like when he was a kid and he made Regulus's hair fall out by accident.

"It's not just him, _Mister Padfoot_," James says anxiously.

Indeed, the words have dissolved, only to reform. This time, Sirius appears to be telling the lot of them to bugger off if they had nothing better to do than bother helpless bits of parchment.

"Well, blimey," Peter says, in awe.

"It's been on like this for a few minutes. Map-Moony told me my hair was stupid and that I ought to have my head looked at because it was a bit misshapen if I asked him," James says, sounding vaguely annoyed.

Remus turns a little red around the ears and swallows hard. It's all Sirius can do not to bite his earlobe.

"Why were you messing about with it in the first place?" Sirius asks.

"I wasn't! I had it in a drawer and I set my wand on top of it and it just… started up!" James babbles excitedly.

Sirius considers asking why James hung onto The Map in the first place, but thinks better of it. Still, a warm swell erupts in Sirius's chest like a small wildfire.

"Well, let's be sensible about this, James," Remus says, seeming to recover his composure. "It's not _us_ doing this, obviously, but it does a fairly good impression. Perhaps it's just… extrapolating."

"What?" Peter asks.

"It's taking what it knows, what it's gathered about our personalities, our opinions, and sort of—I don't know. Taking it from there."

There is a pause, during which they each appear to consider this possibility.

"Brilliant," James says, finally, smiling and meeting Sirius's eye for the first time.

Sirius can't help but smile back. He never could, with James.

"Bloody brilliant," he confirms.

Remus looks back and forth between them. "It's only a _theory_, of course, and one can hardly assume that—"

"It's not a theory, Remus, don't sell yourself short. It's genius. We've created a… a Sorting Map," Sirius says, clasping Remus's shoulder enthusiastically.

"An Insulting Map, really," Peter adds, clearing his throat loudly.

"It's fantastic, that's what it is," James says, smacking the Map repeatedly with his wand, eyes shining with wonder as line after line of angry, scarlet lettering pour themselves across the surface of the parchment. "It talks like us, it insults like us, it's _us_, in paper form. D'ya think…" He glances back at Sirius, and Sirius knows somehow what he's asking.

"I bet it does, at that," Sirius says solemnly, trying to keep the dopey grin from his face.

"What?" Peter inquires loudly.

"Works. I bet it still works. How could it not? The enchantments are obviously still there," James says, his tone growing manic.

"But how? We only had to tap it, before" Remus says, rather sensibly.

Sirius frowns for a moment. They hadn't planned for this to happen, and in his experience with magic, things that you don't plan are usually the result of the magic taking on a mind of it's own—or four minds of it's own, as the case may be. The trick is just to figure out what that mind is thinking, and since they _are_ the mind that is the magic, it should be manageable.

"Well, it's locked itself, hasn't it?" Sirius reasons aloud. "It's shut us out because _we_ didn't want anyone getting at it without our guidance. We didn't want it being used for… good."

"So, it's a matter of intent," James says, picking up Sirius's train of thought with startling accuracy. "It wants to know that we're going to use it towards the purpose for which it was intended."

"Mayhem," Remus offers.

"No, no—sabotage," Peter says.

"Mischief," James and Sirius say, so that at first neither is sure who actually said it.

"Oh Merlin," Remus mutters.

"Wand, wand," Sirius says, fumbling for his wand in his pocket. Sometimes, magic is a tricky old bitch that'll play hard to get just to keep you frustrated. Other times, however, magic just walks right up and stands there, waiting for you to reach out and shake its hand. Fortunately, in this case, it's the latter, and Sirius knows, inexplicably, what to do. He touches the tip of his wand to The Map and says, quietly, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Like someone has flipped a switch, The Map unfurls. Later, after the initial shock has worn off, Sirius will wonder whether he said the exact right thing, or created the right thing by saying it.

"You, my friend, are a god among men," James whispers, eyes still trained on The Map. It's a bit like seeing a loved one rise from the dead, all relief mixed with intense appreciation.

"Oh _Merlin_," Remus repeats, looking concerned. After all, he had been the first to suggest that _perhaps_ leaving something like The Map lying about for future generations of ne'er do wells to play with was not the most responsible course of action.

"Relax, Moony," Sirius says, tapping The Map again. This time, the incantation feels more like a summation. "Mischief managed," he says. Surreptitiously, he finds Remus's hand and twines their fingers together.

"Mates," James says solemnly, "what we have here is the work of the fates."

"Are we going to kill it again?" Peter asks.

James and Sirius just smile.

* * *

_3 February 1974_

_Third Year_

He finds Remus in the library, of course, because Remus is nothing if not a walking cliché. He's slumped over a pile of books that, if stacked properly, would most certainly be taller than either of them. Fortunately, they are not stacked, just strewn about the table, haphazardly. _Like Remus_, Sirius thinks, noticing the way Remus's spine looks as though it's been taken apart and rather carelessly strung back together.

Fortunately, Remus is not asleep. If he had been, Sirius isn't sure what he would have done. Probably loiter aimlessly behind a shelf until Remus woke up. Normally, he would have snuck up very quietly and tackled Remus or shoved something damp and squishy into his trousers, but today is not a normal day.

"There you are," Sirius says, sliding into the seat across from Remus.

Remus looks at him uncertainly for a moment, as though Sirius might bite, which is, all things considered, pretty funny in Sirius's opinion.

"Didn't know I was missing," Remus replies, not looking up from whatever enormous text of doom he is pretending to read.

"You missed dinner. There was pie. I know how you like pie."

Remus glances at him. "I do."

"I tried to steal some for you, but pie is not a food that is particularly suited for pockets. Plus, the house elves are still threatening to go on strike after the llama incident," Sirius says.

"Hmph. Can't say I blame them. Never before have I seen so much blue in one room," Remus says quietly. There's a smile, just there, on the edge of his mouth, but Sirius can't seem to catch it, and Remus isn't helping.

"So…" Sirius says, feeling awkward for the first time in recent memory. It's absurd, of course, that he feels this way. He could blame it on the fact that Remus is one of the most awkward people in the entire history of the universe, only he worries it's something more than that. It's the way Remus looks at him, as though he's actually expecting Sirius to… well, as though he expects something of Sirius, period, full-stop. Still, they're thirteen, and _everything_ is strange and foreign and new, even old friends. Perhaps it's to do with the way their limbs have become long and unwieldy over night, and the deepening of their voices.

Remus looks at him again with that patient, unassuming expression.

"Are you planning to put in an appearance in the Tower any time this evening?" Sirius asks.

Rather abruptly, Remus closes his book. For a moment, he stares at the table, as though attempting to read the wood-grain.

"Sirius, you don't have to do this," Remus says quietly.

"Don't have to do what?"

"You don't have to—this. You don't have to sally forth and befriend the sick, sad werewolf just to prove that you're not living up to your namesake. It's really unnecessary," Remus says, sounding as though he would rather be hexing himself than forcing his mouth to create those particular words.

Sirius almost laughs. It's that ridiculous.

"Are you daft?"

"Am I what?"

"You bloody idiot. I'm down here, in a _library_, of all the humiliating places, because _you_ voluntarily sacrificed pie for the sake of sulking, leading me to believe that either you've finally found a way to have intercourse with _Hogwarts, A History_, or that something is wrong. And I don't like wrong things, Remus, not when they're to do with you and a lack of pie."

"Don't do this," Remus says, pushing the fringe from his eyes. He looks tired. Sirius wonders if this is to do with the coming full moon, and then he wonders how he never noticed before.

"Don't do what? Remus, you're being stupid. Stop it, that's my job," Sirius says, smiling uncomfortably.

"You're not stupid," Remus says.

"Yes, I am! I didn't know. I should have. But now I do, and you're not letting me make it up to you," Sirius says, feeling desperate and ineffectual. He feels so pathetic thinking about all the days he spent watching Remus passed out in the Hospital Wing. It should have been the most obvious thing in the world, but somehow, it never occurred to him.

"You can't make it up to me!" Remus nearly shouts. "This may come as a blow to your almighty ego, but there is nothing you can do that will make this any better. You've only made it worse. At least before I pretend to be normal. But you had to go and solve the mystery, you and James. Couldn't you just have left well enough alone?" he asks, looking so aggressively unhappy that Sirius wishes he could take it all back, but he can't.

"I can make this better. I can. I don't know—I don't know how, but I will. Just, come on, Remus, don't be angry. This doesn't change anything." Sirius leans across the table, presses his hand against the place where Remus's neck and shoulder connect, just about his wrinkled collar, trying helplessly to communicate how fiercely he means this. "At all. Trust me."

Remus stares at him for a moment, his face inscrutable, yet still somehow irrepressibly sad. Sirius thinks he sees Remus loosen, but he can't be sure.

"We'll see," Remus says, low and uncertain.

Sirius opens his mouth to keep arguing, but senses somehow that it won't make any difference. Remus is right—all the promises in the world don't matter. Fortunately, Sirius has always been better at actions than words, and this definitely requires action.

* * *

_16 June 1977_

"Where are my bloody trousers?" Sirius mumbles sleepily into the side of Remus's head. His breath tickles, but it's nice all the same.

The morning sunlight streams into Gryffindor Tower with yellow ferocity, made red by the curtains around Remus's bed. It's warm, and most of the blankets have been kicked away, leaving them tangled in one lone white sheet that's hardly big enough for the both of them. Fortunately, the way they have positioned themselves, they hardly occupy the space of more than one person.

"I think you're getting ahead of yourself," Remus says, opening one eye cautiously. "You might consider finding your pants, first."

Sirius snorts. "Silly Moony. A victim of conventional thinking."

Sirius stretches, slow and lazy, his arm falling across Remus's waist, as if by accident. Remus marvels at how mundane it all feels. That something so spectacular could ever feel ordinary, it makes Remus's head swim.

"Unless you're planning to become some sort of muggle superhero, I do wish you would allow convention to victimize you, too, in this matter," Remus says, finding Sirius's fingers on his hip and stroking them lazily.

"Har har. You're terribly amusing," Sirius says, propping his head on one elbow before leaning in so that their foreheads touch. He sighs heavily.

"What?" Remus asks, hoping that Sirius cannot hear the way his heart misses a beat.

Sirius rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling as though it has done him some grievous harm.

"What are we going to do?"

Remus frowns. He knows, of course, what Sirius is talking about, thinking about, because it's all he's thought about for weeks—months, really, if he cares to admit it.

"Well, we'll just have to see each other like normal people in our situation do," Remus says. It is not a terribly satisfactory suggestion, but it's all he can come up with before breakfast.

"But I'm used to, you know, you. Being around rather a lot. You've spoilt me," Sirius says.

"Someone's spoilt you, that's for certain." Sirius slaps his thigh, but doesn't remove his hand afterwards.

"I'm being serious, Moony. You should enjoy it," he whines.

"I know you are, I do, but what do you want me to say? We've gone about things all backwards. We started out living together and now we're moving out just when things are going well," Remus says. They have, from day one, gone about things arse-over-end, and now, Remus reasons, they are being punished by the Gods of Circumstance.

"James and Lily found a flat, you know," Sirius says.

Remus nods. To call it a flat is, perhaps, an exaggeration, seeing as it's barely three rooms, if you include the toilet, but it's _theirs_, and Lily's already picked out curtains. They're doing things _properly_, of course, because beneath his hellion exterior, James is just like his dad—practical, faithful as a hound, and, ultimately, bound for a life of boring domestic bliss. Remus never envied him these traits until recently.

"Have you thought about finding a place yet?" Sirius asks.

"Not particularly. I'll have to at some point, I suppose, but I still haven't found a job, so renting a flat would be putting the carriage before the Thestral at this point."

"Remus, can I ask you something?"

Remus resists the urge to say _you just did_, mostly because it's something his mother would say, but also for fear that Sirius will suffocate him with a pillow.

"Of course. Er… Should I be concerned?"

Sirius slides his eyes towards Remus for a split second before returning his focus to the ceiling.

"I was just wondering if there was—is some particular reason that you won't… that you don't want to just…" Sirius makes a vague, unhelpful gesture in the air between them.

"Why I don't what? Flail?"

"Why you don't want to live with me, you prat," Sirius finishes irritably.

Remus opens his mouth, then closes it, realising that he has exactly no idea what to say to that, and that perhaps he ought to think of something before he starts babbling like and idiot and ruins the world.

"Never mind," Sirius says, hugging his arms to his chest.

"What? No, not never mind, just… give me a moment," Remus snaps. Honestly, Sirius has the attention span of a goldfish that is high, and sometimes Remus wishes he could press 'pause' long enough to sort out his thoughts without Sirius losing interest in the subject. And by "sometimes," he of course means "at moments like this."

"I hadn't really thought about it," Remus says finally, honestly.

"How can you not have thought about it?" Sirius asks loudly.

"I just… hadn't, that's all. It never occurred to me that that was something I should be thinking about."

"Why would you not—oh bugger it. Well, are you thinking about it _now_?" Sirius asks impatiently.

"No, I'm thinking about whether there'll be scones at breakfast—of _course_ I'm thinking about it now," Remus says. He rubs his eyes tiredly. In all honesty, he _is_ thinking about scones, primarily because he has always been of the mind that conversations like this one should not be had pants-less, horizontally, or on an empty stomach.

"Well, what _are_ you thinking?" Sirius asks. He sounds nervous, which makes Remus nervous.

"I am thinking that… That I was daft not to think about it before," Remus says, turning on his side so that he can see Sirius's profile in the flaming light. His brow is knit with concentration; his jaw is set tight.

"And?" Sirius prompts.

"And I would like to know whether you are serious, or if this is one of those passing fancies you're prone to, like the time you decided to become a ninja—or when you tried to join the muggle army because you liked the uniforms. How no one noticed you were a giant poufter sooner, I'll never understand."

"Took you long enough to pick up on it," Sirius mutters.

"That's hardly the point."

Sirius sighs.

"Moony, darling, schnookums, my little sex-mellon—"

"I am not afraid to vomit in your hair," Remus says soberly.

"Alright, I _am_ being serious though. Deathly so. How could I not be? I mean, it's just… It's just _us_, isn't it? This shouldn't be so difficult. We've lived together for seven years, what's another seventy?"

Remus thinks he sees a faint blush creep up Sirius's neck, except that Blacks do not blush, even disinherited Blacks.

"Sirius, I appreciate the offer, really, but it's not… it's not as simple as all that. For you, there's no risk involved. But if I move in with you and things, well, fall through, I can't very well go crawling back to my parents' house," Remus says, feeling far too old for someone lying in a dormitory bed.

"You are being terribly unromantic about this," Sirius huffs.

"That's just it—I don't have the luxury of romance. I'm not saying I don't want to, I just… I have to be rational about this, alright?"

Sirius rolls onto his side so that their noses nearly touch. His eyes are wide and shockingly bright.

"Love," Sirius says, "is not rational. Not if you're doing it correctly, anyway." He then covers Remus's mouth with his own before Remus can disagree—not that he is inclined to do so.

When he thinks about it, and he does try not to, Remus can never get his head around this love business. It is, in all fairness, _nice_, but so are plenty of other things that are not necessarily good for you, like chocolate or alcohol. Except that those things are only harmful in excess, whereas love, as Remus understands it, only has two states—absent and excessive.

Sirius's mouth tastes like toothpaste and sleep, which is not nearly so unpleasant as it should be. His limbs are warm and pliant, one hand skimming along Remus's ribs with frustrating sluggishness, the other holding the nape of Remus's neck so that he couldn't disengage even if he tried.

Remus presses back, his blood thick with lazy heat. It is extremely fortunate that James and Lily have set up camp in the Common Room for the third time this week, and slightly less fortunate that Peter disappeared in a puff of awkwardness the moment Sirius made a joke about Peter being a captive audience. Otherwise, it might be necessary to roll apart and get on with their respective days like upstanding students. As it is, Remus is not feeling particularly respectable, and judging by the way he is biting Remus's lip-and-now-neck, neither is Sirius.

"I'm not doing your laundry," Remus muses.

"You're not what now?" Sirius asks, halting abruptly.

"Your laundry. I also will not, under any circumstances, eat anything you cook, even if it only moves when you poke it and doesn't smell at all like those potatoes that one time," Remus says.

For a moment, Sirius gets a look on his face not unlike someone who has managed to perform an absurdly complicated spell on their first go—surprised and pleased and confused. The next second, he's gotten himself under control, but Remus imagines that he'll treasure the memory of it for as long as he has memories.

Sirius nods and says "mhmm," looking thoughtful and serious.

"And no bringing home tarts at all hours of the day and night," Remus adds.

"But Moony, a man has needs," Sirius whines, his hand skimming over Remus's thigh before coming to rest in an area one might not consider entirely proper. Remus lets out a little sound like _ahggnk_ before flipping Sirius onto his back and pinning him there, like an insect on a glass slide.

"Well, it's a good thing I can do this then," Remus replies cheekily, kissing a very purposeful line down the centre of Sirius's torso before demonstrating exactly what it is he can do.

Sirius says, "That, I—oh, _oh_—good thing. Very good…" before trailing off into a series of increasingly enthusiastic groans.

* * *

_9 October 1976_

_Autumn, Seventh Year_

Sirius opens his eyes only to slam them immediately shut. The sun, though not yet over the horizon, is blinding. His head feels like it has a serious doxy infestation and his stomach churns angrily. He's just beginning to wonder what he did and whether he enjoyed it when someone breathes on his neck.

Being breathed on is generally one of the least offensive actions one can be subjected to, except perhaps "being looked at funny," or "being force-fed sweets," but when it is unexpected and one is possibly still a bit drunk, it can be rather unsettling. Then Sirius realises that there are, actually, arms around his midsection and that he is collapsed in the lap of a sleeping person of uncertain identity. Part of him hopes it is that Ravenclaw he'd been chatting up the night before, but he quickly tells that part of him not to get any bright ideas until he's had a moment to evaluate the situation.

Slowly, carefully, Sirius turns his (throbbing, heavy) head, and he isn't quite sure how it happens, but somehow his face smacks into the side of Remus's face—it is Remus he's crushing, apparently—open mouthed and unfortunate. Sirius recoils immediately, just in time to watch Remus's eyelashes flutter and open, eyes fuzzy and deep in the early light.

"Hullo," Remus says. He doesn't look angry, of course. But that is sort of the problem with Remus: he's _never _angry, even when he has no right not to be. He's too patient and calm for his own good, _even_ to Snivellus, _even_ in the wake of The Very Worst Thing Sirius Has Ever Done. He punched Sirius in the jaw, sure, but Sirius still gets the feeling that was Remus's personal brand of mercy. It's irritating.

Sirius opens his mouth to say something, like "oh, hello" or, "please excuse my mouth on your face," but he doesn't. He can't.

Remus blinks. Sirius swallows thickly and says, "Remus," but then he runs out of words, because Remus's eyes are _right there_, and that feels so important that Sirius can't breathe properly.

It's strange.

Then Remus says, "do you need" but Sirius misses the rest of the sentence because he is busy flinging himself at the side of the tower and vomiting terrifically into an unsuspecting tree some hundred feet below. Remus comes over and smoothes the hair from Sirius's eyes, and when Sirius has finished, Remus walks him back to the dormitory, without comment.

* * *

_17 June 1977_

"Pass the biscuits, mate," Peter says to James.

James obliges. His other hand is situated firmly on the small of Lily's back, and he keeps glancing at it occasionally, as though he's not sure it's his hand.

"Thanks," says Peter, carefully selecting three minty-chocolate confections.

"I'm so glad it's a nice night," Lily says wistfully. "It'd be a shame if it stormed. Cooped up in the Tower, stepping all over each other is no way to end things."

Sirius shoots Remus a pointed glare, having made, in his opinion, a strong case for skipping out on the after-hours stargazing in favour of, as he'd put it, gazing at things that are not stars. Remus elbows him, gently.

"It's really… weird, isn't it?" James says, curling closer to Lily's side.

"Yeah," Peter replies gravely.

"I mean, we're literally _never_ going to do this again," says James.

"Never is a long time," Remus says, and he's not sure what sense in which he means it. He means that no one can say for certain what will happen in the distant future, of course, but another side of him is terrified of how final it all feels.

Remus has never had trouble saying goodbye to places. He read the Catcher in the Rye in Fourth Year, and could never understand it when Holden complained about not _feeling_ like he was leaving. You are there and then you're not: that's leaving. It's always made sense, but now, on the grass, in the dark, with Sirius's fingers in his hair and James and Lily close at his side, and Peter munching happily on sugar-coated cavities, it all feels terribly surreal. How can they leave? How can they be expected to walk out of here tomorrow, as though they are full-fledged adults, and start… living.

And there's the war, as well. It's not a war, actually, just a series of events that, when you squint, look an awful like the way wars start, and Remus doesn't like to think about it, but he knows that it will affect them. The others don't think about it, Remus can tell. He envies them their naiveté, but Remus read all those dusty old history books that they were assigned, and he knows that a war isn't fought by old men with their ideals and great intentions. A war is fought by the generation that will inherit its outcome, and they are that generation.

But that is not now. Right now, all Remus can think about is how incredibly strange it is to think that Hogwarts is no longer his home, and that it never will be again. He reaches out to catch Sirius's hand against his stomach.

"I should be packing," Remus says, toying with the frayed edge of Sirius's sleeve.

"Packing, my dear Moony, is something that happens to other people. Extras and minions and people with unfortunate hair. We're the leading men. Let the trunks fall where they may," he says, partially into Remus's hair.

"You may be a leading man, but I have unfortunate hair _and_ ears like my uncle Milton. Packing happens to me quite a lot."

"Oh, quiet down Moony, you're ruining the atmosphere," James says loudly.

Remus opens his mouth to protest that yes, perhaps James too is a leading man, but that doesn't mean his socks are going to sort themselves—only then he realised that Lily already helped sort James's socks, so there's no point in arguing. _Perhaps_, Remus thinks, _I am destined to sort Sirius's socks until the end of my days._ He wonders whether the thought should bother him, but finds that it doesn't. Besides, Sirius is biting his ear ever so gently, and that makes it hard to care about much of anything.

Peter begins to cough.

* * *

_25 November 1976_

_Late autumn, Seventh Year_

It is nine thirty-seven on a Thursday evening, and Sirius is going to vomit all over his Astronomy homework.

It's been creeping up on him for months, but now that it's finally upon him, Sirius feels somewhat violated. He hadn't _known_. Honestly, he hadn't. There'd been so many moments, so many perfectly good opportunities to figure it out, but somehow he hadn't, and now he has no right to be surprised, except that he _is_. He really is.

"Are you alright?" Peter asks, squinting at him from across the room.

Sirius nods, wondering whether everyone else in the common room can hear his heart beating, or if it's just him. It must be the latter, because Peter returns to his book without further comment.

It is as though he's walked around his whole life with his head in a paper bag and had never noticed the sun, but now that the bag is off and he's seen it, it's so clear where all that warmth was coming from all this time.

Remus Lupin, it turns out, is the sun. And Sirius is going to pass out.

In a flurry of misplaced parchments and abused charts, Sirius scrambles out of his chair and bolts for the dormitory.

Remus is in the dormitory.

He has no idea what he is doing, but some exploded, melted, burning part of him knows, just bloody _knows_, that seeing Remus, talking to him, possibly even touching him, will help more than any amount of sensible contemplation.

Only there is another part of Sirius that is screaming _No! For the love of all things delicious and pie-shaped, turn back, man! You will meet your end in yonder bedroom!_ But that part doesn't seem to be the part controlling Sirius's legs, because he is pelting up the stairs with gusto and hair flying everywhere, but he doesn't _care_, because Remus is up there, and it's Remus he needs to see because he's _all_ Sirius needs to see, and Sirius feels like an idiot for taking so long to work it all out.

His hand grabs the doorknob, only it's not his hand, it can't be his hand, because his brain is not doing it. It's not his thinking brain that's turning the knob, it's not his brain making him walk through that door. It's not his brain that sees Remus sitting at his desk, hunched over so that his shirt rides up in the back and his hair falls into his eyes.

Sirius's knees wobble dangerously.

"Are you alright?" Remus asks, glancing up from his homework. There is ink on his left cheek. Sirius thinks it's the most endearing ink-smear he's ever seen.

"Yes," Sirius says, stunned at how normal his voice sounds.

"Well, are you planning to stand there all night or is there something I can do?" Remus is staring at him like he's turned into a troll and Sirius hopes that he does not look like someone who has just watched the entire bloody world swoop sickeningly before their eyes.

"Yes," Sirius says again, realizing that it is the only word he feels capable of forming.

"Right," says Remus, putting down his quill. He looks a little alarmed, and Sirius can't blame him.

"I need you to come with me," Sirius says. The words fly out of his mouth like Bobotuber _Pus. _What is he saying? Where is he going with this? And more importantly, how will he convince Remus to follow?

"Where are we going?" Remus asks, quite reasonably.

"I need to show you something. Something I have to do. Only I can't do it here," he says, glancing over his shoulder, half expecting James to burst in all flushed and covered in lipstick.

"Well, where can you do it?"

"I don't know yet. Just… Just come on," Sirius says, grabbing Remus by his sleeve. Sirius is careful not to actually touch him, because he gets the sense that accidental molestation might not be the correct approach.

"Can I at least finish my—oh alright," Remus says tiredly. He has to have realised that Sirius is not listening, because he gives up struggling and trails after Sirius down the stairs.

Whether or not Peter notices them, Sirius can't be sure, but Peter seems willing to ignore them for the sake of the slightly round Fifth Year girl who's homework he's agreed to look over.

For a long while, they walk in silence. Every now and then, Remus says something like "where are we going?" and Sirius says something like "not now," but mostly, they are silent. In all honesty, Sirius hasn't the first clue where he is going, only that he needs to get as far from civilization as possible without actually leaving the castle. He thinks he might be on the eighth floor, but he can't be sure, having ducked through a half dozen passages without paying much attention to where they spit him out.

Remus stops walking.

"Sirius, if you don't tell me what's going on, I'm going back to the Tower," he says patiently.

"You can't. You don't know where we are," Sirius argues.

"Neither do you!" Remus replies loudly.

Oh, this is going so poorly.

"Yes, I do," Sirius says.

"Then where are we?"

"We are," Sirius says, grabbing Remus's sleeve and the nearest doorknob, "here."

He yanks open the door and jerks Remus inside before realising, with no small amount of horror, that they are in a bathroom, and that Remus will probably expect him to say something soon, or at least have the decency to curl up in a corner and die painfully.

"Here is a toilet?" Remus asks, looking incredulous.

"It is now," Sirius replies, sounding half as ill as he feels.

"What the hell is going on?" Remus says.

The way Remus is staring at him makes Sirius feel clumsy and obvious, like a small child trying to perform a complicated spell with a wand the length of his arm. It makes his skin crawl, but somehow he knows, just knows, that whatever happens, this horror of all horrors is better than never exposing his insides to the light of day—the light of Remus—in the first place.

"Moony, I need to… There is something that you need to know. That I need you to know, rather," Sirius blurts out. It's neither eloquent nor well-formed, but at least it's words that form sentences and not helpless grunting.

All at once, Remus's face does something indescribable. His eyes widen and he bites his lip and looks like he might leg it for the exit or punch Sirius in the jaw, or some combination of the two.

"No, you really don't have to, Sirius," he says quietly.

"Yes, I bloody do!" Sirius shouts. Suddenly, he gets the feeling that they aren't having the same conversation, and that's the problem. When Remus says things, he always means what he says, but never just what he says. There's this layer of subtext that clings to every sentence like pond scum and seeps into Sirius's brain when he's not careful. It fills up his head with questions and feelings, and when he tries to voice them, it comes out in the babble of a seventeen-year-old boy, which is remarkably unhelpful.

"You don't understand, Remus. You look at me like you know things, like you expect me to be—to be… something. I don't even know what, but it makes my brain hurt and I don't like it," he yells. He isn't angry, but the words keep coming out.

"I'm very sorry," Remus says softly.

"Don't be," Sirius says, and kisses him full on the mouth.

* * *

_18 June 1977_

"Sirius, have you got an extra shirt?" Remus asks in frustration. In his haste to pack, he has managed to lose every last bloody shirt he owns and then some.

"An extra _clean _shirt?" Sirius replies, glancing at Remus from where he is sprawled comfortably on Remus's bed. He'd been watching Remus pack until Remus told him that it was making him twitchy, at which point Sirius began to do a poor impression of a sleeping person.

"Preferably. Although at this point, it's sort of beggars and choosers," admits Remus. He imagines briefly what would happen if he were to show up for the train without any shirt at all, and thought makes him smile.

"My shirts won't fit you, o ye of great and gangly werewolf stature. Oh, wait, I think my Chuddley Cannons t-shirt is in James's bed. It's clean-like," says Sirius.

"Dare I ask?" Remus says with raised eyebrow.

"Probably best you don't," Sirius says sombrely.

Remus digs around beneath James's unmade blankets and extracts the shirt. He holds it up with two fingers, checking for questionable stains.

"Sirius, there's an enormous tear in the side of it," Remus says.

"So?"

"So it's unseemly. Nevermind, I'll just un-shrink my things and find something in there," Remus says.

"Don't do that," says Sirius, rising from the bed and catching Remus's arm as he makes for his wand. With his other hand, Sirius takes the shirt and mutters _Reparo _under his breath. The torn edge mends its self, as though stitched together by an invisible needle.

"There," Sirius says quietly. He's still standing close. Remus can feel his heat against his bare chest.

"You're getting awfully good at wandless-work," says Remus.

Sirius shrugs. "Dumbledore told me to practice. Well, actually he just said a lot of vague crap about what a valuable skill it is to have at times like these, but, you know, his subtext is always in capital letters."

"Mm," Remus hums, nodding absently.

"I think he's going to have me… indoctrinated soon. You, too, probably."

Remus sighs, his hands clasping Sirius's hands. He feels like someone has dropped a brick into his stomach. He swallows hard.

"I know. Sirius," he says, suddenly feeling like he can no longer not talk about all the things they aren't talking about, "what happens after this?"

Sirius looks at him, solemn and honest. "I have no idea," he says.

Remus frowns.

"Now, none of that," Sirius says, touching their joined hands to the edge of Remus's mouth. "I won't have you fretting and fussing over things that may or may not occur in the near or not so near future."

Remus sighs. "It is what I do," he says deliberately. It's all he can do, sometimes, and he wonders how Sirius manages not to think about all the things he can't help but think about. Does he not understand that Remus feels like he's bet his entire life on one single, silly, stupid horse with a penchant for getting into dangerous situations without regard for how important he is in the minds of certain interested parties?

"I think about it too, you know," Sirius says, in answer to Remus's unspoken worry.

"And what is it that you think?" says Remus.

"That I love you. And that you have a very nice mouth for kissing. And that if, Merlin forbid, it turns out that we are the tragic heroes instead of the dashing young knaves of this here picture show, then at least I will go to my tragic and heroic end knowing those first two things. They are ever so important, you know," says Sirius.

Remus wants to argue. He wants to say that yes, that's all very well and good, but it doesn't really address the—but even his niggling subconscious can't take it when Sirius looks at him with those eyes that whisper about faith and forevers. On some level, Remus has always known that being with Sirius requires a certain suspension of worry and forethought, things to which Remus has always clung. Things he finds himself missing less and less.

"You are…" Remus says, wonderingly. Then he says, "a remarkable fool," and Sirius tries to smack him, but their hands are still clasped, and all it does it bring them closer.

Remus kisses him, mostly because that is what he feels like doing, but also because it means a few more minutes in which he does not have to consider the outcome of their lives or the increasingly real possibility that they will have more to deal with in the coming years than paying rent and procuring their own food. No, he kisses Sirius and thinks simply, _we are remarkably good at this_, and, _who would ever have thought?_

Sirius runs his hands up Remus's back and Remus trembles. Their lips are wet where they meet and Sirius's body curves against Remus like it was carved to fit there. There's the knife-sharp edge of Sirius's teeth, the rough patch on his chin that he missed shaving. There are spots and scars and a smattering of freckles between them, and yet, they are perfect, because Sirius loves it when Remus studies at strange hours and Remus smiles every time Sirius tries and fails to blow the fringe out of his eyes.

Remus wonders if things of this nature can last, endure to the bitter end, or if they're destined to burn themselves out like matchsticks. He wonders if it'll matter, in the great tapestry of time and space, that Sirius thinks he has a remarkable mouth for kissing. He wonders if it will matter that they were stupid and stubborn and almost missed out on this, all of this, and how wonderful things could be.

No, those things are all incidental, silly and irrelevant. What will matter is that once upon a time, Remus Lupin loved Sirius Black, full-stop.

* * *

The End.

For the time being.


End file.
